Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of JavaScript Jabber
Speaker 1: not JavaScript. This isn't Star Wars JavaScript of the VV.
Speaker 1: My name is Steve Edwards. I am the host with
Speaker 1: the most Today with me on the panel, we have
Speaker 1: Dan Shapiro, Hey.
Speaker 2: Hey, coming from the lockdown Tel Aviv. Inside the lockdown
Speaker 2: israel A j O'Neill, Yo yo.
Speaker 3: Yo, coming at you live from the sunny woodlands of
Speaker 3: Virginia with wood chips and places I didn't even know
Speaker 3: I had.
Speaker 1: And with us today our special guest is Mrod Stern.
Speaker 1: How you doing, Marod, I'm fine.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Good our praysure to have you. So to start out,
Speaker 1: once you give us a little introduction, just brief a
Speaker 1: bit about yourself, what you do while you're famous, and
Speaker 1: we'll go from there.
Speaker 4: Okay, I'm not famous. I'm a father of four and
Speaker 4: it's a crazy there in all the time, but now
Speaker 4: in the lockdown because of the coronavirus, it's even more crazier.
Speaker 4: It's crazier. I'm at the Global Death Communities manager atwiks
Speaker 4: dot Com. I love blogging, I love to take part
Speaker 4: in the communities, and I really love everything related to branding.
Speaker 4: Especially personal branding, which.
Speaker 1: Is exactly what we're going to talk about today. So
Speaker 1: why don't we dive right into the topic, and I
Speaker 1: guess give us a description of what you mean by
Speaker 1: the term personal branding.
Speaker 4: Okay, So basically I think that personal branding the same
Speaker 4: as branding. It's what comes up on your mind when
Speaker 4: you actually think about someone or some company. What's the
Speaker 4: first thing that you associate with it. Sometimes when I
Speaker 4: speak with people about that subject, we came into a
Speaker 4: conclusion that our mind is like working with Google search engine.
Speaker 4: You put in a term, a name, or a company
Speaker 4: or whatever you want, and there's like a few results
Speaker 4: and when you give the name, for example, Dan shapiir Uh,
Speaker 4: it's I hope it's okay to take you in a
Speaker 4: So what pops into my mind is performance. Now, dance
Speaker 4: is a lot more than just someone who takes part
Speaker 4: in the performance world. Very high skill developers is much
Speaker 4: more than that. But the things that Dan is doing
Speaker 4: online offline, and we can take it because it's it's
Speaker 4: super interesting to talk about it, but the things he
Speaker 4: do actually brings him closer and closer to the term performance.
Speaker 4: So the same goes with huge companies and the same
Speaker 4: goes with personnel people.
Speaker 1: Now, when you're talking about personal branding and the people
Speaker 1: that we want to talk about who this is relevant to,
Speaker 1: we're not talking about everybody Joe blow off the street,
Speaker 1: are we? Or are you thinking more of people in
Speaker 1: the technic specifically in the technological world or maybe the
Speaker 1: sports world who are trying to sell things. What subset
Speaker 1: of people do you think this personal branding is important for?
Speaker 4: Yes, so, actually I think it's important to everyone. Everyone
Speaker 4: can benefit from putting attention into their personal brand and
Speaker 4: doing stuff. And we'll talk about what stuff is, but
Speaker 4: doing more to promote their name and to get it
Speaker 4: closer to the terms, the professional terms that they want
Speaker 4: to be associated with. In my daily work, I work
Speaker 4: closely with developers, so I can or maybe I know
Speaker 4: more about doing those stuff and actually having your aim
Speaker 4: build up in the developers community, what's related to open
Speaker 4: source contribution, meetups, events, podcasting. Just as you do, I
Speaker 4: do get the opportunity when I'm asked to to speak
Speaker 4: with small business owners and you see that personal branding
Speaker 4: is also.
Speaker 5: Very value to them. But in different world, in.
Speaker 4: The world of customers and products and things like that.
Speaker 4: When you talk about the world of technology, from JavaScript
Speaker 4: to Skaala to funton and end and mobile and all
Speaker 4: things technology. It's it's a bit different. I think that
Speaker 4: it's different with platforms. For example, we see that Twitter
Speaker 4: is super important for developer. Twitter is the place today.
Speaker 4: When you, for example, compare it with Facebook, you see
Speaker 4: that Twitter is the place where developers talk within themselves
Speaker 4: and brings up all kinds of technology issues and engineering
Speaker 4: insights on that platform. So there are all kinds of differences.
Speaker 4: And actually this is the place that I love because
Speaker 4: I love technology. A word about myself. I'm not a developer.
Speaker 4: I learned to develop, but I wouldn't hire me as
Speaker 4: a developer. But because I learned development myself, I do
Speaker 4: know the terms, so I know to talk with developers
Speaker 4: and actually bringing or crossing the gap between branding and
Speaker 4: maybe say a bit of marketing themselves and their world
Speaker 4: of engineering.
Speaker 1: So when we're talking about brands and personal branding, what
Speaker 1: examples come to your mind of good brands or examples
Speaker 1: where branding has really worked well, whether maybe it's large
Speaker 1: or or small.
Speaker 4: Well when we talked about brands, and here's another important
Speaker 4: issue about effort, because I think that many listeners will say,
Speaker 4: I don't care about my personal branding. I have skills
Speaker 4: that I are very high demand in the industry, and
Speaker 4: I'm all good and I don't need that. But if
Speaker 4: you take into account the amount of effort, time consuming
Speaker 4: and money spent of huge brands like Apple, Nike, or
Speaker 4: Coca Cola, you'll see that they never stop. They never
Speaker 4: stop promoting themselves and investing in their brand. And if
Speaker 4: you can ask me, I'll say, I'll never forget the
Speaker 4: Apple brand whatever, I never forget it. I use their products,
Speaker 4: I like the brand. I never forget it. But it
Speaker 4: doesn't matter. They keep on spending so much effort on branding.
Speaker 4: So you must stop and ask yourself, if those huge
Speaker 4: brands are not stopping investing in it, what us the
Speaker 4: people are not getting. And I think that the same
Speaker 4: as big brands, small brands or personal brands are super
Speaker 4: important because at the end, I think we have some
Speaker 4: kind of value in the industry. We can be super
Speaker 4: good at what we're doing and bring value. But I
Speaker 4: think that at the end, you need people to know
Speaker 4: about it. You need more people to know about it.
Speaker 4: And if I think about all kinds of examples, so
Speaker 4: you can see people like Dana Vamov, for example, and
Speaker 4: I like bringing this example to my peers and to.
Speaker 5: Developers that I work.
Speaker 4: With, because Dana Bramov, if I'm not mistaken, today, has
Speaker 4: something like two hundred and forty thousand followers on Twitter,
Speaker 4: and things that he says, for example, are making a
Speaker 4: lot of noise and people respond and follow him for
Speaker 4: a reason. But he never you know, he wasn't born
Speaker 4: Dan Obamov and got that Twitter account and all his
Speaker 4: assets that.
Speaker 2: Oh he was born he was I can interject he
Speaker 2: was born Dan. Yes, yes, he was born at Dan
Speaker 2: at Twitter. That's for sure true.
Speaker 4: So so it's a journey and it takes time. He's
Speaker 4: a good example of the things that he's doing and
Speaker 4: how he's building building it. I do think that, you
Speaker 4: know what, I do have an example that will also
Speaker 4: illustrate an obstacle that they see.
Speaker 2: Interject before you give that example. I really what you're
Speaker 2: saying really resonates with me because as we know, as
Speaker 2: we all know, this is being recorded in the beginning
Speaker 2: of April, and this is a very problematic time all
Speaker 2: around the world with the whole coronavirus thing. And I
Speaker 2: keep seeing on Twitter people who I never expected to
Speaker 2: see in this kind of a position tweeting out that
Speaker 2: they've lost their job and are looking for employment. It's
Speaker 2: certainly not an easy period for anybody, but having to
Speaker 2: face unemployment on top of everything else is certainly a
Speaker 2: big deal. And undoubtedly when you have a more significant brand,
Speaker 2: personal brand, it becomes much easier for you to be
Speaker 2: able to land your next position or get hired again.
Speaker 2: And like you said, just the fact that you know
Speaker 2: that you are good at what you do might have
Speaker 2: been sufficient let's let's say even two or three months ago,
Speaker 2: but all of a sudden today it may not be
Speaker 2: sufficient because you know, if you if nobody outside your
Speaker 2: company knows who you are, what you can do, what
Speaker 2: you're capable of, then it's going to be much more
Speaker 2: difficult for you to find your next your next job,
Speaker 2: your next position. On the other hand, if you can
Speaker 2: tweet out that you know you're looking for a job,
Speaker 2: and a lot of people know you and will retreat
Speaker 2: your tweet, and people are out there will say, oh,
Speaker 2: I heard about this guy. He's really good.
Speaker 4: You should hire him.
Speaker 2: And so there are positions out there, but they're just
Speaker 2: more difficult to get to so I think we're definitely
Speaker 2: now experiencing the importance of having this recognized, recognizable brand
Speaker 2: and a good brand associated with yourself.
Speaker 4: Actually, this is a great comment, and I do want
Speaker 4: to elaborate with two things that I've come across in
Speaker 4: my life. One was when I worked in a company,
Speaker 4: not the company that I worked today, and there was
Speaker 4: a period where there started firing people globally. One of
Speaker 4: the things that people started doing was to address me,
Speaker 4: come to me and ask me to sit with them
Speaker 4: and work on their LinkedIn account, especially, but on their
Speaker 4: you know, other digital assets, in writing and so on.
Speaker 4: And I remember that I was so frustrated saying them, look,
Speaker 4: I'll help you whatever you need. But I was so
Speaker 4: frustrated because the time to start working on those things
Speaker 4: is not in emergency emergency time, not once you need
Speaker 4: to land a job you start working on those stuff.
Speaker 4: That's it's it's never too late, right, But that's not
Speaker 4: the time. It should come when you're where you're doing okay,
Speaker 4: and it should come when you enjoy that, enjoy the journey,
Speaker 4: enjoy sharing your stuff. And we will talk about it too.
Speaker 4: But this is one thing that I wanted to share,
Speaker 4: and another one that when you talked about being more
Speaker 4: valuable as someone who is potentially can can join your company.
Speaker 4: That's one another thought. Another side of personal branding which
Speaker 4: I saw lately was that the things you do outside,
Speaker 4: the things you share externally, the brand that you build
Speaker 4: for yourself, can also raise your value within the company.
Speaker 4: We have a developer that was he has his own
Speaker 4: open source project and he was mentioned on Jess Weekly twice.
Speaker 4: By the way, Dan Shapier was mentioned on Jess Weekly also,
Speaker 4: But it's not done, Shapelle, and.
Speaker 2: You're going to make me blush very significantly before this
Speaker 2: is over. Let's let's take it. Let's use example to
Speaker 2: other people.
Speaker 4: You know, it's I said, it's it's someone else. You also, well, you,
Speaker 4: you were also mentioned on that newsletter. But but I'm
Speaker 4: referring to someone else. And he told me that one
Speaker 4: of his team members wasn't aware of the things that
Speaker 4: he's doing on the community of open source and contributing.
Speaker 4: And then he read his name, his size, name of
Speaker 4: his team member on Jess Weekly and he was astonished.
Speaker 4: He was amazed to see his name and he said, Wow,
Speaker 4: I can't believe you're you're being manage here. So what
Speaker 4: happened is inside his team it was now considered to
Speaker 4: be a star because he was mentioned. So you see
Speaker 4: that it's two side. It has the external side. Yes,
Speaker 4: people know you outside your company. It might help you
Speaker 4: in the future, it might not, but it's also bring
Speaker 4: more weight to your presence within the company you already in,
Speaker 4: which is cool, super cool.
Speaker 1: I think we've done a pretty good job of establishing
Speaker 1: what personal branding is and why you would want to
Speaker 1: do it. So let's move on to the how. So
Speaker 1: what what are the platforms or tools that in our environment,
Speaker 1: our world as software developers are best for building this brand.
Speaker 4: I'll start with the with the beginning. You know, there's
Speaker 4: the Nikes Moto, just do it. I'll start with something else,
Speaker 4: just scheduling. I see, because developers are super busy, we
Speaker 4: always have things to do. But one thing that I've
Speaker 4: noticed is that we're like really working on our calendar
Speaker 4: and really really following our calendar. So if we just
Speaker 4: schedule one hour forty five minutes at the beginning, just
Speaker 4: once a month week, that can be a good starting
Speaker 4: point in just having the time to sit down and
Speaker 4: start doing. Now here's the doing and the platforms and
Speaker 4: everything that should be taken into account. One is the mapping.
Speaker 4: What is your territory? Are you front end developer, backend developer?
Speaker 4: And within that, what are the terms that you are
Speaker 4: the technological term that you want to be associated with.
Speaker 4: What are the things that you like to do? What
Speaker 4: are the things that naturally, without anybody you know, making you,
Speaker 4: you go out and read. You can see the things
Speaker 4: that you read again without anyone making you do that,
Speaker 4: and you can assemble the things or the territory that
Speaker 4: you want to be part of and make your voice
Speaker 4: be heard. So, as said, mapping what do or what's
Speaker 4: my territory? And if you do a good job at
Speaker 4: that mapping, you also map people who are considered to
Speaker 4: be thought leaders, who are the thought leaders in that
Speaker 4: territory in your industry, and you can stop following them.
Speaker 5: What do they do? Are the writing?
Speaker 4: Are their podcasting? You can learn so much by just
Speaker 4: observing what others are doing that you'll be amazed to
Speaker 4: how quickly you can learn. And it's not rocket science. Okay,
Speaker 4: it's not rocket science. It's a lot of attention so
Speaker 4: looking at people who are already doing it. And here's
Speaker 4: another point that it's super important.
Speaker 5: It's a journey.
Speaker 4: It's like going to the gym. It's not one time
Speaker 4: thing and there you go, it's running by itself. No,
Speaker 4: it's always about doing, and it's also about really giving
Speaker 4: a value. And the more you accurate with your mapping,
Speaker 4: the more accurate value that you can bring. And things
Speaker 4: that I find valuable to me as someone who is
Speaker 4: working on personal branding and marketing and so on in
Speaker 4: the high tech industry might not be valuable to someone
Speaker 4: else in a different industry. So the more you accurate
Speaker 4: with the mapping, the more accurate value that you can
Speaker 4: bring to the table. Now, bringing that value is based
Speaker 4: on your actually knowledge the things you know to do
Speaker 4: a learned or experienced I think that if we start
Speaker 4: looking at platforms, I'll take a step back and say,
Speaker 4: let's talk about content at the end. Platform is a platform.
Speaker 4: It's the place where content can come to life. Content content, content,
Speaker 4: It's always about the content. Content is actually the way
Speaker 4: to take your insights, the value that you can bring
Speaker 4: to the industry, the things that you know, learn and
Speaker 4: so on, and explain them. It can be a blog post,
Speaker 4: it can be a podcast, it can be YouTube, it
Speaker 4: can be an open source project, it can be a usert,
Speaker 4: it's really everything, and it can be tweeted and it
Speaker 4: can be shared on LinkedIn. But it's about the content.
Speaker 4: It's about good content. And you know, this is a
Speaker 4: very interesting point about content and doing for developers. One.
Speaker 4: The web is sometimes sadly for really bad things, and
Speaker 4: when developers, yes, yes, actually it is. But when developers
Speaker 4: step step up and take an active part in the
Speaker 4: discussion online and share professional stuff, we actually take and
Speaker 4: I'm saying it's it sounds big, right, but we as
Speaker 4: a humanity take a step forward. That's good stuff. This
Speaker 4: is the good stuff that we need.
Speaker 5: So this is.
Speaker 4: Point one point two that I keep hearing when I
Speaker 4: work with developers is everybody knows what I know. That's
Speaker 4: like the most or the biggest obstacle that people face.
Speaker 4: Everybody knows what I know, and it's strong. Developers came
Speaker 4: and today are being part of this company, that company,
Speaker 4: this start of whatever, whatever they do. They know something
Speaker 4: that most of the population doesn't know.
Speaker 5: You have.
Speaker 4: Valuable knowledge and you should express it and not stop
Speaker 4: yourself with everybody knows what I know. No, that's not true.
Speaker 3: So I want to bring up an example. I think
Speaker 3: everybody or an experience I think everybody here has had.
Speaker 3: So you go to learn how to do something and
Speaker 3: there's a vital piece of information that's missing, Like, for example,
Speaker 3: you use Node for the first time and you find
Speaker 3: all these things about repositories for no, but you can't
Speaker 3: find any way to how to install note on Linux.
Speaker 3: Let's say that that were the case something like that,
Speaker 3: where like there's something and like all the pieces are
Speaker 3: there except for the thing that if you're reading the document,
Speaker 3: everybody just assumes you must know that, and you go
Speaker 3: searching for it and you don't know what to search for.
Speaker 6: You're obviously missing something.
Speaker 3: And then when you finally figure it out, it's something
Speaker 3: so simple. It was like you needed to copy and
Speaker 3: paste two lines, and so then you don't document it either,
Speaker 3: you know. But the person who finally does, the person
Speaker 3: who finally says, Okay, I'm going to take these two
Speaker 3: steps from this website and these three steps from this website,
Speaker 3: and I'm going to create my own blog post that
Speaker 3: has all five steps in the same place.
Speaker 6: Like that becomes a winner.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I can give a classic example of that. AJ
Speaker 1: When I was you know, I first started out in
Speaker 1: open source development working on druple at one of the
Speaker 1: agencies I used to work with. This was about ten
Speaker 1: years ago. One of my big things was a patche
Speaker 1: Solar because integration with the Patchy Solar search engine was
Speaker 1: coming really popular at the time. Getting it installed and
Speaker 1: SYNCD up was really difficult, especially if you wanted a
Speaker 1: multi index setup. So I took this blog. I pieced
Speaker 1: everything together from like three or four different blog posts.
Speaker 1: I finally got all put together, so I wrote on
Speaker 1: our company's website. I wrote one blog post that said, okay,
Speaker 1: and I think it's still out there, here's how you
Speaker 1: install and get a multi index solar set up with
Speaker 1: Drupal seven. And I put it out there and it
Speaker 1: was one of those things and I know you've mentioned
Speaker 1: this before EAJA two where I would go back to
Speaker 1: that myself, you know, because you know i'd google it. Oh,
Speaker 1: here's my own post on how to do this, because
Speaker 1: it's the way I think. Well, a couple months later,
Speaker 1: I was in chatting with one of our other developers
Speaker 1: who looked at the website statistics and our owner and
Speaker 1: the other guy mentioned by the way is far and
Speaker 1: away our most popular post has been this one. On
Speaker 1: Drupel and a Patchi's solar because it was a how
Speaker 1: to put everything together in one place where you could
Speaker 1: follow step by step, and it just made it really
Speaker 1: popular because it helped other people. Even though the pieces
Speaker 1: were out there, they hadn't been put together in a
Speaker 1: good way.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, there's three pieces of content I've had like that.
Speaker 3: There's a stack overflow post on how to resolve get
Speaker 3: merged conflicts, and I think that's still popular today. For
Speaker 3: a couple of years, I had the number one hit
Speaker 3: on on how to install Ruby on Ubuntu with RVM,
Speaker 3: and then there was also for a couple of years,
Speaker 3: I had the number one hit for how to publish
Speaker 3: a package to NPM. And these are all things that
Speaker 3: people have been doing for years. But it's just that
Speaker 3: scenario of like you had to go to two different
Speaker 3: blog posts to get the information. Anybody anybody who's going
Speaker 3: to more than one blog post to get information. If
Speaker 3: you create a post that puts that information in one post,
Speaker 3: you've got you know, you really do have actual, real
Speaker 3: potential to be the number one hit on Google for
Speaker 3: that one thing.
Speaker 2: If I can add to that. And it's a point
Speaker 2: that kind of addresses the two points that Murad brought
Speaker 2: up because Moad was talking about the fact that a
Speaker 2: you want to be consistent and that b you want
Speaker 2: to put stuff out there even if you think that.
Speaker 6: Other people know it.
Speaker 2: And I think the way that you can hit both
Speaker 2: these nails on the head is basically to blog your journey.
Speaker 2: I know that a lot of people actually do that
Speaker 2: that they whenever they learn new stuff, one of their
Speaker 2: techniques to actually learning it is to kind of try
Speaker 2: to explain it into a blog post and also kind
Speaker 2: of document their journey. And like you said, even they
Speaker 2: themselves can come back together to that and use it
Speaker 2: as a resource for themselves certainly for others, and that
Speaker 2: simultaneously solves both problems because if you you know, you
Speaker 2: become consistent because you document what you do into a
Speaker 2: blog post and you put out their valuable content because
Speaker 2: there you know, there will always be people behind you
Speaker 2: in the journey. So wherever you are, there are people
Speaker 2: who are on their way to that point, and you'll
Speaker 2: just make life easier for them. Now, I wish I
Speaker 2: personally was much more consistent in applying this advice, but
Speaker 2: I know from people who are really successful bloggers that
Speaker 2: this technique has worked really really well for them.
Speaker 3: Simplest way to do it, because there's the whole yak shaving, like, well,
Speaker 3: I want to do this, but to do that, I
Speaker 3: need to do this. To do that, I need to
Speaker 3: do this. It's not good for branding necessarily, but you
Speaker 3: can use get hubjists and when you do that, all
Speaker 3: the branding goes to get hub. But gethubjist is a
Speaker 3: good way to do it, and at least you get
Speaker 3: your username in there and then you know later it's
Speaker 3: pretty easy to take a gethubjist. It's just a markdown
Speaker 3: file and you know, put it into a blog and
Speaker 3: you could host that on GitHub pages and you could
Speaker 3: use a c name record pointed at gethub pages to
Speaker 3: get your own branding, so instead of you know, gethub
Speaker 3: dot com, it would actually show my cool username dot com.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but even if that doesn't happen, I know that
Speaker 2: a lot of potential employers look at GitHub activity as
Speaker 2: a means to vet possible employees. So even if you
Speaker 2: just get all that activity and views and stars on GitHub,
Speaker 2: even if it's not like your name doesn't become famous,
Speaker 2: employers will still look at that and take that into account.
Speaker 6: So effect you are building.
Speaker 2: Your brand even if you know you're not stopped in
Speaker 2: the streets because people don't recognize you.
Speaker 4: I do want to say something about about what just said.
Speaker 4: It's not about being famous. It's more about the journey.
Speaker 4: It's about the passion to share things that you learned,
Speaker 4: and it's it's to be part.
Speaker 5: Of the community.
Speaker 4: Being famous, you might get that, but it's not. It
Speaker 4: shouldn't be the result or it shouldn't be the goal
Speaker 4: because you need to enjoy it. And being famous is
Speaker 4: something that takes a lot of time. And never forget
Speaker 4: that you're like famous in a very specific area.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you want you want that impression. You want
Speaker 3: people to see your name or in your profile picture
Speaker 3: so that when they're like, oh, yeah, I remember reading
Speaker 3: your article about this thing in JavaScript, I remembering your art.
Speaker 6: You know. It's the impressions over time.
Speaker 4: It's about really helping others and really bringing value to
Speaker 4: the table. And one of the results is yes, they
Speaker 4: will maybe remember you or stuff like that, because you
Speaker 4: never know who reads your stuff. I'll give you an example.
Speaker 4: When I was four years back younger, I found a
Speaker 4: data security flaws in Israeli ro Rove cove is a
Speaker 4: ticket that you go on train and buses with it,
Speaker 4: and I found that if you do some things with it,
Speaker 4: you can find the owner's I D six latest trips
Speaker 4: that he or she done, where he or she lives,
Speaker 4: and stuff like that. And I was in a set
Speaker 4: of mind of if I managed to do that and
Speaker 4: get that information using this and that everybody could do that.
Speaker 4: But even so I was passionate enough to sit down
Speaker 4: and write about experience with this lovecome this ticket and
Speaker 4: from here and there. Two days after that, I was
Speaker 4: approached by one of our leading news sites and they
Speaker 4: asked to actually take that piece and publish it on
Speaker 4: their site, the news site. And two days after that,
Speaker 4: the government has actually assembled an emergency discussion about that ticket,
Speaker 4: just because I documented what I did and what the
Speaker 4: information I was able to take out and shouldn't. So
Speaker 4: you never know who see what the things that you
Speaker 4: publish up there. You never know. And sometimes you managed
Speaker 4: to create an impact, and it's far better than being
Speaker 4: famous or whatever, because you actually made something happened for
Speaker 4: the best, for the good. So I think maybe that
Speaker 4: should be some kind of a goal, making an impact,
Speaker 4: because you actually change something that otherwise you thought unreachable.
Speaker 4: That's another angle to all kinds of doing online stuff
Speaker 4: and working on your personal brand. And another angle that
Speaker 4: I think we should cover is that taking an active
Speaker 4: part in your brand and building your brand and your
Speaker 4: voice and being a prominent voice actually works on your
Speaker 4: soft skills. Every developer. Good developers got really good art skills.
Speaker 4: They know how to code, they know to build apps
Speaker 4: and so on. But soft skills the way that you
Speaker 4: can communicate your ideas, the way that you can express
Speaker 4: the things you want to express, convincing, leading our stuff
Speaker 4: that are super important, super import and by sitting down
Speaker 4: and actually writing an article, for example, you actually work
Speaker 4: and craft your writing skills. Maybe at the beginning it's
Speaker 4: a bit hard, but the more you practice, the more
Speaker 4: you publish, the more you read other stuff, you actually
Speaker 4: work on your soft skills. And again, if we talk
Speaker 4: about your personal value, what you bring to the table,
Speaker 4: you actually bring more value to your organization. Another great
Speaker 4: soft skills that you can think about is the way
Speaker 4: to communicate with people and actually expand your networking, the
Speaker 4: way that you can reach out and make partnerships and
Speaker 4: do things together with different organizations and maybe government offices
Speaker 4: and whatever. The word is huge. The more you practice,
Speaker 4: the more your name is well, more familiar what you do,
Speaker 4: and more people trust you. And this is another angle.
Speaker 4: When someone is being consist and keep on bringing value
Speaker 4: to the discussion, whatever the industry, the topics and so on,
Speaker 4: he's being more trusted. And when you bring all this
Speaker 4: into account, you can make more impact, you actually being
Speaker 4: more valuable to the place you're part of.
Speaker 1: Going back to what we were talking about famous, I
Speaker 1: think the good example that comes to mind is you
Speaker 1: want to be famous, as you were saying, maurd about
Speaker 1: doing something and providing information, providing helpful things as compared
Speaker 1: to being famous like the Kardashians. Let's for saying, it
Speaker 1: comes to mind, you know, they're famous for what for
Speaker 1: being famous? I mean, yeah, they're pretty, but they're just
Speaker 1: famous for being famous as compared to your example Murada
Speaker 1: Dan Abramarb or what comes to mind for me as
Speaker 1: Eric hanschat a West boss of Scott Tlensky, people who
Speaker 1: put out stuff that's informational and helped people do their jobs.
Speaker 2: So but to touch on that it can be intimidating,
Speaker 2: you know, especially when somebody is starting out is saying like,
Speaker 2: what what is the likelihood of me becoming another west
Speaker 2: Boss or or another Dana Brahmov or whatever. And first
Speaker 2: of all, of like what said at the beginning, they
Speaker 2: didn't start out that way. They got to that point
Speaker 2: by working hard and putting out a lot of useful content.
Speaker 2: But the other point is that you don't necessarily need
Speaker 2: to get that far. What I like to think about
Speaker 2: is the fact that, you know, in the past, when
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about my parents' generation, they spent their entire
Speaker 2: career often within a single organization at at you know,
Speaker 2: they they started working there, they worked there all the
Speaker 2: way to retirement, and that was that. And these days
Speaker 2: people switch jobs every three years, two years, four years.
Speaker 2: So and when you're switching job, you keep on selling
Speaker 2: yourself again and again. And if you've got a good
Speaker 2: brand going for you, better than the average, it doesn't
Speaker 2: have to be a West Boss level brand, it just
Speaker 2: needs to be better than the average, then effectively you've
Speaker 2: done marketing for yourself. So you're not just coming in
Speaker 2: as a salesperson trying to sell some product that nobody's
Speaker 2: seen before, because they know you're meeting them and they've
Speaker 2: never heard of you before. That meeting. Now you've done
Speaker 2: some marketing in advance of the selling process, and in
Speaker 2: the same way that this works for companies and for products,
Speaker 2: it works for your benefit. And even having a little
Speaker 2: bit of marketing goes a long way than having no
Speaker 2: marketing at all.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I think let's go back down the route
Speaker 1: we started to go a little while ago and we
Speaker 1: got back off. Do we well? First of all, let
Speaker 1: me put it this way, Murad, is there anything we
Speaker 1: want to cover as part of the why and what
Speaker 1: you want to show share and the benefits of it?
Speaker 1: And we covered everything there.
Speaker 4: I think we did.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's talk. Let's get back to how so
Speaker 1: you've mentioned before, you know the popular ones. I think
Speaker 1: the obvious ones are blogs, Twitter, maybe YouTube videos. You
Speaker 1: want to talk about those in any more detail, particular
Speaker 1: method for utilizing those platforms.
Speaker 4: Okay? Sure. So at the beginning, let's split let's split
Speaker 4: it into two, the online and the offline. Basically, it's
Speaker 4: easier to start with the online, but we shouldn't ignore
Speaker 4: the offline. And I'll talk about it in a second
Speaker 4: regarding online, and you can start with the mindset whatever
Speaker 4: I learned. If it's valuable enough, let's share it. One
Speaker 4: of the great stuff about being part of the high
Speaker 4: tech industry is that we must learn as a daily habits.
Speaker 4: We every day we must learn selfie, we read technical blogs,
Speaker 4: we go and actually get updates about all kinds of
Speaker 4: development issues and bugs and updates that are going on.
Speaker 4: We need to keep ourselves really up to date learning
Speaker 4: all day learning. And if you just put yourself in
Speaker 4: a mindset of learning and actually feeling that you learn,
Speaker 4: being presents as you learn, and understanding that what you
Speaker 4: do now when you sit down and read your Twitter feed,
Speaker 4: when you read this article, is that you are learning.
Speaker 4: You can easily and very fast create mini content. What
Speaker 4: my two cents about that I just read this. Here's
Speaker 4: my two cents. That can be a tweet, that can
Speaker 4: be a very short blog post, but I'm taking it
Speaker 4: things that is happening anyway, like reading something professional and
Speaker 4: actually me chewing it and giving it back with my
Speaker 4: point of view. So this is one thing that we
Speaker 4: should start with. I really recommend any.
Speaker 5: Developer to check and you know.
Speaker 4: Like cleaning and removing dust from his or her LinkedIn
Speaker 4: account and Twitter account, because at the end, when someone
Speaker 4: is searching your name, he or she will find your
Speaker 4: digital assets. So whatever is out there, make sure that
Speaker 4: it's look good. It shouldn't you know, it might be
Speaker 4: not super active or maybe not active, but it looks
Speaker 4: okay and reflect what you do. So this is another
Speaker 4: thing that you should take into account. And then you
Speaker 4: can take a step deeper. You can say, okay, after
Speaker 4: mapping and we talked about mapping, and here's my territory,
Speaker 4: this is the things that I want to talk about.
Speaker 4: Here's the thought leaders that I should follow and see
Speaker 4: what they these guys are doing.
Speaker 5: Now we really want to take.
Speaker 4: A step deeper and start creating content that reflect my
Speaker 4: understanding in that in that industry. So then you can consider.
Speaker 5: Maybe open up a blog or.
Speaker 4: Maybe just start, you know, tweeting more often, but make
Speaker 4: sure that your tweets are being more and more about
Speaker 4: those topics you might want to consider. I don't know,
Speaker 4: podcasting and somethings. Podcasting and writing a blog post are
Speaker 4: making people frighten because it looks so time consuming and
Speaker 4: things that only the greatest know how to do. But
Speaker 4: that's not true. You need to just sit down and
Speaker 4: do that and feel really comfortable with both the top
Speaker 4: that you want to talk about and the platform that
Speaker 4: you want to use, if it's writing or talking about it,
Speaker 4: or making videos or just you know, contributing code and
Speaker 4: to get up and stuff like that. This is the
Speaker 4: online This is everything that you can do right now.
Speaker 4: But in order to do you know, like three hundred
Speaker 4: and sixty degrees of building your brand and making a
Speaker 4: prominent voice in the industry, you should also consider doing
Speaker 4: things offline, for example, meetups working on forty five one
Speaker 4: hour talk that you can deliver in front of an
Speaker 4: audience when it's allowed. Now we're in a period of
Speaker 4: time that you know, because of the coronavirus, we can't
Speaker 4: do that, but we can do online meetups. Again, it's
Speaker 4: a talk. It's a talk by you about the subject
Speaker 4: that you passionate about and you want to share your
Speaker 4: insight with others. And that's that's great because you actually
Speaker 4: create content. The content is your insights, is your talk.
Speaker 4: It's also your PowerPoint or whatever app that use. But
Speaker 4: then you can share it online on slideshair and stuff
Speaker 4: like that. So you have a talk, and I don't
Speaker 4: know many meetups that I know are also doing video
Speaker 4: of the talks. So when you go up on stage,
Speaker 4: and many people don't like to do that. Again, it's
Speaker 4: more about the soft skills and the courage to go
Speaker 4: up and say here's what I know and I can
Speaker 4: share that with you, And many people are finding to
Speaker 4: do that and talk you know, public speaking. But taking
Speaker 4: that step and going up on stage and making you
Speaker 4: know or working on the skills of public speaking actually empowers.
Speaker 5: You a lot.
Speaker 4: So offline and online are basically working together. And you know,
Speaker 4: I can see many meetups where someone is going up
Speaker 4: on stage and then people in the audience are tweeting
Speaker 4: about him or her and about the things they talk about,
Speaker 4: and there you can see how the offline and actual
Speaker 4: event is being discussed online. And if the Twitter account
Speaker 4: of the presenter is strong enough and people aware of it,
Speaker 4: so they tag him or her, so the discussion can
Speaker 4: go and get stronger online and actually close that circle
Speaker 4: and making it more empowered. So if we talk about
Speaker 4: starting I would start with scheduling time because we're super
Speaker 4: busy and time is something that we've missed. So scheduling
Speaker 4: forty five minutes one hour, maybe a week at the
Speaker 4: beginning at least. Then start mapping what I want to
Speaker 4: talk about, who are the thought leaders in my industry.
Speaker 4: I would even add what are the spatial dates in
Speaker 4: my industry? All kinds of software that were released in
Speaker 4: that date, so I can talk about it when it's relevant.
Speaker 4: And events, of course, if there are global events that
Speaker 4: are related to my industry, you want to be part
Speaker 4: of it. But begin with.
Speaker 5: Mapping because then you know where you're going.
Speaker 4: And what are the stakeholders that you should engage with.
Speaker 4: And then it's actually sitting and understanding how you want
Speaker 4: to express your ideas, how do you want to engage
Speaker 4: with your audience, and how do you want and where
Speaker 4: you want to build your audience, and understand that whatever
Speaker 4: you choose, you are not going to break the internet
Speaker 4: at the beginning, because it's a journey. And at the
Speaker 4: beginning you might feel that you talk to a wall
Speaker 4: and no one answer you and no one cares about
Speaker 4: what you do. But that's not true because everything you
Speaker 4: do has some kind of impact and you never know
Speaker 4: who looks and read the stuff you do, and step
Speaker 4: by step you build your audience, you build up the
Speaker 4: people seem in oar mind like you that at the
Speaker 4: end you can give value and you can get value
Speaker 4: from your activities, and you know what, you can even
Speaker 4: enjoy it because one of the things that when I
Speaker 4: talk with developers that comes up is that you know,
Speaker 4: you can sit down on your desk and code all
Speaker 4: day long and do a great job, that's for sure,
Speaker 4: But having or taking an active part in the community
Speaker 4: sometimes bring up all kinds of invitation of taking part
Speaker 4: in I don't know, some conference abroad where they want
Speaker 4: you to talk, so you fly there and you add
Speaker 4: actually go up on stage and you present your company.
Speaker 4: That's a huge win for your company, not just for you,
Speaker 4: and it actually brings spice to your career, to your
Speaker 4: daily coding routine. So it's actually another cool stuff as
Speaker 4: not just you know, as I pointed the famous which
Speaker 4: I'm against, it's also another great aspect of these activities.
Speaker 1: One thing about content that I want to bring up
Speaker 1: that I don't think has been mentioned, and I've seen
Speaker 1: it come up recently as being fairly prevalent is owning
Speaker 1: your content. The particular use case that comes to mind
Speaker 1: is blogging on something like Medium. So I know, when
Speaker 1: Medium first came out, it's really popular and everybody's saying
Speaker 1: blog on Medium, blog on Medium. Your content's that much
Speaker 1: more visible, and so on and so forth. So then
Speaker 1: medium starts adding requirements. You know, they want you to
Speaker 1: sign up for a membership to be able to read this,
Speaker 1: and there's various limitations. So all of a sudden, I
Speaker 1: started seeing a lot more people saying, maybe we shouldn't
Speaker 1: be blogging on media. Maybe you should own your own content,
Speaker 1: put it on your own blog that you have hosted,
Speaker 1: whether it's you know, something a static site generator and
Speaker 1: get hub pages, or you know, whatever the case may be.
Speaker 3: And mediums started I don't know if they're still doing this,
Speaker 3: but they were at least testing this where super popular
Speaker 3: people on Medium that posted content they got lots of views.
Speaker 3: They made paid content, so they'd show you the first
Speaker 3: paragraph and be like, okay, you've watch you've you've watched
Speaker 3: five of five popular exactly yes views this month.
Speaker 6: Now you need to subscribe to view more.
Speaker 3: Right, It's like it's a company that is taking the
Speaker 3: content you produce for free and monetizing it exactly.
Speaker 1: So I think that's pretty important too. I know one
Speaker 1: platform that I've seen used and I've heard about it,
Speaker 1: and I've started using myself as dev dot two dev
Speaker 1: dot t O and one of the cool things I
Speaker 1: just started blogging that I put a blog post on
Speaker 1: there I think last week or something like that, is
Speaker 1: they allow you to say, okay, this is a canonical
Speaker 1: link for my blog post, and you could point it
Speaker 1: to your own platform. So I'm just curious to see
Speaker 1: more what your experiences or thoughts on content ownership.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm not going to dip into this platform or
Speaker 4: another platform, because I think that platforms go up and down,
Speaker 4: and there's trends in that and this. I think that
Speaker 4: whatever you do, and again, without you know, talking legally,
Speaker 4: the things that you publish are mostly or your content.
Speaker 4: This is something that you write. And again I'm not
Speaker 4: super familiar with the things you said about medium. If
Speaker 4: it's theirs or yours, and I wouldn't you know what,
Speaker 4: I wouldn't even think about it at the beginning of
Speaker 4: my journey. I would just start doing and start writing
Speaker 4: and start publishing. I think it's I hope it's answered
Speaker 4: the question.
Speaker 2: I have to agree with Morad on this. I think
Speaker 2: that obviously, if you find yourself to be a regular
Speaker 2: blogger and you blog day in, day out, and you're
Speaker 2: starting to get the following, then it's then it might
Speaker 2: be definitely worthwhile to like think about where you want
Speaker 2: your content to reside and stuff like that, But at
Speaker 2: the very beginning, I think it's more important than anything
Speaker 2: else is just to get your content out there. And
Speaker 2: if that literally means just finding the easiest platform to
Speaker 2: use for you, then just go for it. Anything is
Speaker 2: better than just procrastinating.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know what, there's even one thing that
Speaker 4: no one can take from you, and that's the skills
Speaker 4: that you developed during the process. I can tell you
Speaker 4: on my free time when I have some I like
Speaker 4: managing my Telegram John. I have a channel on Telegram.
Speaker 4: It almost had two thousand subscribers, and I usually update
Speaker 4: there on all kinds of technology news and stuff like that. Actually,
Speaker 4: it's a very interesting story of how I build it.
Speaker 4: It was built because a visit of GitHub in Israel,
Speaker 4: but it's a different story anyway. In order to promote
Speaker 4: my channel, I wanted to create video that actually sums
Speaker 4: up the latest updates that I've published, and for me,
Speaker 4: video editing was magic. I looked at YouTube and I
Speaker 4: saw videos and it was like black box. I couldn't
Speaker 4: understand how people provide this amazing stuff. The sounds effect
Speaker 4: and the transitions and the lightning and everything. I was
Speaker 4: amazed and it was a magic to me and something
Speaker 4: that I really wanted to crack down. So I sat
Speaker 4: down and learned video editing. Super not related to what
Speaker 4: I do on my daily job, but I sat down
Speaker 4: and learn it another It's not soft skills, it's just knowledge.
Speaker 4: But it made me think in another way of how
Speaker 4: presenting my ideas, summarize things that I did, and so on,
Speaker 4: and marketing my telegram channel. It was, you know, a
Speaker 4: step that I took, pure learning. And when I look
Speaker 4: at it today, when I know video editing and the
Speaker 4: magic is no magic at all, I see through. And
Speaker 4: when I do my job, my daily job, and I
Speaker 4: have my video person who is responsible to all kinds
Speaker 4: of content video that we have and so on, I
Speaker 4: know how to talk with him. I know what to
Speaker 4: demand from him, I know what he's doing, and then
Speaker 4: I can really you know, communicate and get a better
Speaker 4: product and content for my daily job and what I do.
Speaker 4: So it's so great to take an active step, an
Speaker 4: active point of view and understanding of cracking and learning
Speaker 4: whatever you can and writing down, you know, just sit
Speaker 4: down and look at well known blog posts and ask yourself, Wow,
Speaker 4: how he or she did that? So many shares, so
Speaker 4: many comments.
Speaker 5: I can never do that.
Speaker 4: That's crazy, but it's not. It's just sitting down and
Speaker 4: learning and breaking the magic until you own it. And
Speaker 4: from soft skill to heart skills, we always on the
Speaker 4: learning path. The moment we know, the more we I
Speaker 4: think can bring to the table and have more value
Speaker 4: and so on. My point is that I wouldn't consider
Speaker 4: this is a content that is mine or not just
Speaker 4: sit down and start, because the starting point is the
Speaker 4: the point where great stuff can happen regarding the things
Speaker 4: that you know how to do and deal with.
Speaker 1: So we're getting close to the end of our time here.
Speaker 1: So before we moved the pics, is there anything else
Speaker 1: we're missing you want to cover real quick, Moron or
Speaker 1: anybody else?
Speaker 4: You know what, I'll just mention that one of the
Speaker 4: great stuff that I heard, and it really sit down
Speaker 4: good with what we've talked about, was when President Barack Obama,
Speaker 4: former President of the United States, Barack Obama, he said
Speaker 4: in one of his video and promoting I think it
Speaker 4: was Hour of the Code or Hour of Code. It
Speaker 4: was initiative of teaching kids to code and in that video,
Speaker 4: he was addressing kids and teenagers and he asked them
Speaker 4: to be in the sake set of mind of being
Speaker 4: active and not passive. He said, don't play something like,
Speaker 4: don't play with the app, create the app. And I
Speaker 4: think that it's so deep and when we talk and
Speaker 4: if I try to sum up everything we talked about
Speaker 4: personal branding and being active and being a prominent voice
Speaker 4: in your industry, it's about state of mind of actually
Speaker 4: being active and creating and not just consuming content. That's
Speaker 4: a point that I really like.
Speaker 1: Okay, cool, Yeah, we've got the link here, so we'll
Speaker 1: make sure and drop that into the show notes so
Speaker 1: everybody can see that video.