S11E11 Communities in Tech
Intro: Welcome
to another episode of Elixir Wizards, a podcast brought to you by SmartLogic, a custom web and mobile development shop. This is Season 11, where we're branching out from Elixir to compare notes with experts from other communities.
Owen: Hey everyone, I'm Owen Bickford, Senior Developer at SmartLogic, and we
Sundi: I'm Sandy Myint, engineering 
manager at cards. com. 
PHP,
Owen: are your host for today's episode. For episode 11, we are joined by Camille Clayton, Director of Women Who Code DC, and Scott Talinski, co host of the Syntax Podcast. In this episode, we're comparing nodes between programming communities. So, we're going to really cover everything. Everything from Elixir to Python, I'm sure TypeScript, Java, JavaScript C.
Rust, who knows, maybe even, dum dum dum, PHP.
Sundi: Ruby. Why don't we just throw them all out there?
Let's just, just say all of it.
Owen: I think PHP's come up 
on every episode this season. Yeah, so
it's 
gonna happen, right? 
Sundi: That's fair. 
Owen: So, welcome everybody, Camille and 
Scott.
Sundi: Yay. 
Scott: Thank you. 
Camille: so much. 
Sundi: yeah, why don't we just get to know you both a little bit? Camille, why don't we start with you? Who are you in the, space of engineering and, , what do you do and how do you fit into this community that we call Women Who code? , 
Camille: I'm a director of Women Who Code's, , DC chapter. I've been, , part of the org since late 2017, early 2018. , and have been a director since, , mid 20 20 and it's really a pleasure to be part of, the ever growing community of women in the DC area. And to just, help those careers along, as we all progress in our various niches and industries.
 On the personal side, I'm an engineering manager, focusing on Kubernetes. and so a lot of systems engineering on my side, dealing with a little bit of everything.
Owen: All right on and Scott, who are you? Where do you come from? What are 
you up to? Where do you come 
from?
Scott: Yeah. So I, I'm a developer out of Denver. I originally got my start. Working for many different agencies. So, a long time agency dev, but started doing YouTube in 2012 where I had my channel level up tutorials. I grew that channel quite a bit over the years and then met my co host for Syntax in 2017, Wes Boss.
Wes and I started the podcast and it became really popular right away. And then, , as recently as of 2023, we were acquired by Sentry, , Level Up Tutorials as well as Syntax. , the LevelUpTutorials brand and everything is now being swallowed under the, Syntax banner. And Syntax is really just a podcast teaching full stack web development.
 HTML, CSS, JavaScript is really , where we find most of our topics, but, at the core of it, we're primarily JavaScript devs who do all the lovely JavaScript framework 
world and all that stuff.
So. 
Owen: Fun, right, 
framework 
hopping 
Sundi: That's so cool. you know, one thing that I feel like we could have done a little bit better this season, Owen, is, a lot of our guests aren't from the Elixir community, and maybe we don't tell them about what we're up to, so just for our audience and for, both of you here, , I'm also an engineering manager, Camille, in the Elixir space, and, I also run the DC Elixir meetup, so that's a community I'm pretty involved in.
 But we also have a pretty, , fun community going on with this podcast as well, Owen, if you 
want to talk 
about that. 
Owen: So I forget what year you joined, I think back 2019, 
2020, 
Sundi: Don't give me a pop quiz on a 
Monday.
Owen: This is your life. so You know, I joined SmartLogic, , 2021. It's just past two years, two year mark for me. And then I think. January, February of the following year, weaseled my way in as co host of the podcast. So, , so that's, that's how I got into the podcast. It's been great as a co host, hearing feedback.
Anytime we go to conferences, people come up to us and like, Hey, uh, we really love the season or I don't think we've been peppered with like, Insults or criticisms. It's mostly like positive glowing reviews and stuff. But it's been really great talking to everyone That we can in the community, 
right? 
Sundi: Yeah, one thing that we, get told a lot that is very unique about the Elixir community is . how welcoming and open we are, , how engaged we are in giving people feedback when they're like, oh, I don't know how to do this thing. Can you teach me? Or does anyone know what I can do here?
And sometimes the creators will jump in and, and say, oh, you could try this thing or that thing. And so, , we did think it would be fun to, in a season where we branch out to other So, um, we could talk about other areas of engineering and such. We could talk about how other engineering communities operate and how you all, , function as, I mean, not organizations.
It's a little kind of, well, I don't know, Camille, Women Who Code might be a little bit more organized and we can talk about that. but yeah, it's interesting. 
Owen: I think it might be good to describe , when we say community, what comes to mind, because I've got some ideas, some things, it's a little bit expansive, Camille, we'll start with you, when we say community, what comes to mind.
 
Camille: To me community is that bridge between, friendship and functionality, right? The people you meet in the community aren't necessarily people you talk to on a daily basis. You might not even see them for a whole year, but there's those warm memories that come back. I think about as, as we had a holiday party, , last week with another org, DC Women in Agile.
And, we had traditionally had that party together in 2018, 2019, and then, you know, pandemic. But it was really great to be able to bring both sides of the community back together and meet at a shared space we met over, I'm sure you're familiar with the Acela space if you're in the D. C. area. And I'm like, oh, I remember this. This is where I gave my, second ever talk, and those bonds deepen over the years. 
And so community is really about. Engaging and keeping that torch lit.
The Distance, even if you haven't seen someone recently closes very quickly and you can keep people in the loop around what is needed and what's happening.
anD that's something that we've been working on a really hard on the last year. , as we've been rebuilding, 
 My org, our chapter, went through a lot of change. We previously had, like, nine directors, and have geared down to, , a core three, and then are trying to find volunteers and leads and train people.
And it's interesting to be part of those challenges, and the community, , seeing all those wonderful faces, , and knowing people want to be a part of it, makes it worth coming 
back to, week after week. 
Sundi: Yeah, that's really cool. And we're definitely going to dive into the differences between our communities. But Scott, can you tell us what community means to you and what the syntax community looks like on your end?
Scott: One thing that we've always tried to cultivate , especially with our, podcast is this feeling of we're just people hanging out and talking about stuff we like. And if, you like this stuff, you can hang out with us and talk about it too.
And then in our community spaces like discord. Or even comment sections, or we have a small time Reddit or something like that , in these types of community spaces, , we're here to just chat about the stuff that we like. So, you know, that the comments are. are more or less like means of uplifting.
We're talking about like positivity. We're talking about real things, things that people hit in their life. And, I think some community spaces can get wrong is that they can be really focused on. The brand or the identity and all these things, rather than being about like, Hey, we're, we're people we have, multifacets, we can talk about dogs and cooking and in code, we can talk about whatever, but you know, just,
being able to hang out with people who are like minded and who enjoy the same stuff that you do. It's always, it's always, um, I don't know, cool experience. Now in person stuff is very different. For us, we're always showing up at conferences or we just did our, first real, well, maybe it was our second meetup, but our first decently sized meetup in Toronto somewhat recently.
And I gotta say, there's really nothing quite like, , seeing a hundred people in person is much better than seeing a thousand people Online in a digital space sometimes. So, just being able to cultivate and grow those spaces as well has been huge for us. 
Sundi: that really speaks to me, especially on the like, Oh, we could talk about dogs or cooking because I feel like I'll enter an elixir chat and we'll talk about cooking for 5, 000 years or Women Who Code DC. My most active channel is the plants channel. I know Camille's laughing right now because I never shut up in that channel, but it's so useful because first of all, everyone kind of like It's not that we all speak the same language, but we're all engineers or engineer adjacent, so we kind of have the same problem solving methodology when it comes to our plants.
And then, of course, regionally, we're all kind of in the same zone. So when we're talking about, oh, did your kale grow this year? No, it was a bad year for kale. Those stupid lanternflies are coming in, and it's just really funny. So I appreciate that our communities are open to more than just tech subjects. It's fun.
Owen: forget Pokemon. 
Scott: Yeah. 
We're, we're multifaceted
Sundi: I do not, in fact, talk about Pokemon, with anyone 
other than you, Owen. 
Scott: Pokemon, of course. 
Sundi: Yes. He's an expert. 
Owen: Yes. 
I'm an expert. 
at like making Sandy face palm about 
Pokemon. Pokemon puns is 
 My specialty. 
I'm glad we have room for Pokemon puns 
in our little tiny elixir wizards.
Sundi: No, our quota is full. There is no more. No more 
room. 
Owen: wow. Yikes. Okay. All right. I gotta. Develop some other humor then. So, thinking about community, , we've all been intertwined in some of these communities for a while now.
 if you can think back to the first community that made you feel welcomed or included, where you felt comfortable asking questions or saying hi, something that maybe , brought you out of your shell a little bit. What comes to mind?
, what's the first community where you felt like you could actually jump in Camille. ? 
Camille: back in like 2017
Back in like 2017, I went to a DevOps Days, conference when they were doing a one day in Baltimore. And it was eye opening, if y'all have met, , Nathan Harvey, who's over at Google, 
and was at Chef at the time, , he's a big advocate for this concept called open spaces, where the people who are at an event, decide the topics for a good chunk of the day.
And getting to be a part of those was really eye opening, , and probably a really pivotal moment in my career. In my life and just deciding I wanted to be more active in, all these burgeoning tech communities going on in Baltimore and D. C.
Owen: Right on., I know, , in the conferences, there's a thing of, when there's a circle of people, this is something naturally happens with humans. Apparently, , something you'll hear people say is , anytime you see someone Wandering outside the group, open up a space or just leave a space open.
So that people feel comfortable coming in and, that kind of thing, because, you know, we all have different degrees of extroverted slash introvertedness. I think, I feel like I'm more extroverted at, , developer conferences and the most other places. But that's just me. Scott, , what's the first community that roped you in? 
Scott: Well, I want to just say really quick about your leaving a space open. I have a four year old daughter and I've been going to a lot of birthday parties and you'd be shocked at how many parents all know each other and then they stand in a little circle and they don't leave a space open, I'm like, you gotta leave a space open.
I can't shove myself in here and I'm just standing here awkwardly. So, yeah. Hugely important. Yeah, I'm going to go off the board here and, you know, the first space that I felt really, comfortable in, , in just community in general. This is actually really wild. As a high school, I wanted to learn how to break dance and, this is not even programming related.
I messaged a group at the university of Michigan and they were just like, come on by. And I I'm a high schooler. There are a bunch of college kids. I show up, they sneak me in because you have to have a college ID to get in the building. They sneak me in through the back door. And these guys who I didn't even know were willing to sneak me in to be a part of this little 10 person community.
And they didn't know me at all. And it's always stuck out to me as being like.
prop the door open for, the next person that wants to come in because sure enough, by the time that I was like a junior, I became president of that club and, really spent a lot of time there.
And, and, you know, all of my best college memories were from that. Being able to do that, but it only happened because somebody was willing to prop the door open for me and open the door in that way. So I think about that all the time. What are some ways that I'm not, propping the door open or what can we do to bring other people in to community more just from that experience? 
Sundi: You know, Scott, the wildest thing about that, cause I've been thinking about this too since Owen asked it, trying to think coding community or not, what was the most open, first community I ever kind of encountered, I think it was also
breakdancing. I'm pretty sure it was, 
cause I can't, they really just want everybody to join in. 
Scott: They're very open. They're very open folks. 
Sundi: I went to my friend's breakdancing competition. And it was like a whole thing. It was like 20, 40 people and they were all getting ready beforehand. It was almost like a homecoming event. And I just showed up and I was like, I'm not gonna know anyone, but I did say I would come support my friend. And then they were just like, Oh, what's your name?
Come in. Come here. , Oh, did you need, do you need this? , Oh, you should sit with us. And I was just like, Whoa. It was overwhelming. The amount of friendliness, they're just so nice. 
Scott: The core tenets of 
that community are about bringing people, and then it doesn't matter your skill or where you're from or whatever, it's 
just about the music and hanging out and having fun. So, Yeah. that. tracks. 
Sundi: I didn't dance. Owen., making faces. 
Owen: I know 
I'm like, if I, if we go to 
the next elixir conference, there's not like a break dance pad from like cars. 
com or Sundi
or 
Scott: yeah,
Sundi: Absolutely not. I went to support someone else who knew how to dance.
Owen: I got to see these Sundi 
moves. 
Sundi: I, I, just replicate the rabbit emojis. You know, the flying ones, the stars one. The crazy happy dance one, that little dude. Yeah, I'm doing all the dances right now for everyone who can't see me, which is 
everyone else. 
Scott: heh heh.
Sundi: Oh man, yeah, so it's, it's interesting how this incorporates to our lives because Scott, as you were saying, you now think about leaving a space open. And that's something I think about at Elixir Conferences. for those who've seen me at Elixir Conference and felt comfortable enough to come up to me who they've never talked to me before and they said, I love your podcast, , I really liked your talk.
Or I saw there was an opening at your company. Could we talk about it? And they, felt Fine, going up to a stranger and doing that, I really appreciate that. I'm glad that we have, on this podcast, fostered the environment and the openness and, for people to feel comfortable to come up to us , and chat, and I think that's really cool because nowadays we make all of our best friends online, right?
So , yeah, that's really fun. I guess moving into how this openness can foster learning and development for new programmers, Scott, as somebody who is, working on development courses and such, how does that play in? , how is that a factor? 
Scott: Yeah. I think that the number one thing is that, you know, everybody comes to any different tutorial or any different learning space with a completely different
level set, no matter what. I mean, we all have, especially in this web tech world, right? there's so many different specialties and so many of them are related and so many of them have different odds.
Concerns or different, focuses. So I think there's, this intention of always really supporting that beginner space of knowing that, , using. Jargon when it's unnecessary isn't doing anything for the person watching, other than potentially making them feel alienated or stressed out, or maybe lost about what you're talking about.
 Finding the ways to be able to bridge that gap between only teaching beginner skills, but still having a beginner way of explaining things as a, tough problem, but something that I think. Pays off really well, to be able to explain things in their most simple terms while at the same time still explaining them deeply in a way that, gives people full strength and 
Scott: understanding.
Owen: Sure, that's a, it's a skill and it's a hard skill the people that I see struggle with it the most. I don't want to throw anyone under the bus here, but I think the academics, it's like people who were like really spend, hours and hours and hours going all the way deep into the weeds and mastering everything, explaining those concepts to people who are not entrenched, a hard thing to do. On this note on the same kind of theme. I'm wondering. , with women who code, is this a community that's open to women who want to code women who have code, heck coded women who know the secret code, what's the target audience for women who code. 
Camille: Yeah, I, I would say the target audience, the core audience, is women who've been in, tech and tech adjacent industries for two plus years, and are either looking to learn new skills or improve existing skills as well as just have room and space to Have a little room to let their hair down
We do a fair amount of intro sessions, but we've been trying to figure out what that balance is
Because, what Scott was talking about, you 
can get a little bit, in a rudder loop where you're always doing intro sessions. , but trying to figure out how to make that content, accessible for the long term is something we're looking to touch on in 2024. 
I feel like I could do an Intro to DevOps. 
 Every week for the rest of forever. 
Sundi: feel like Camille just 
described my hell loop. I'm pretty sure that's what it looks 
like for me. 
OH my gosh. , Kmail, not that this is like a brainstorming session or anything, but one thing that I, let go a little bit that I'd love to bring back is the Success Channel.
We used to do Success Fridays, and I thought that was such a cool way, any community really, but especially women who code, just a quieter, smaller space just to very, candidly express something we were really proud of that we might be embarrassed to talk about other places for no reason other than just social constructs, I don't know.
 Something as small as my PR actually didn't fail CI today or something. I don't know. We used to do that more regularly, , during the pandemic, it was very, very active, very important to us. And I think we've just gotten a little bit away, from it. And I felt awkward posting it in every 
Friday by myself. 
Maybe we can 
bring that back. Yeah. 
Camille: should, bring it back. , one thing that's been a little bit of a personal struggle, I'm on the East coast, but I've been working West coast hours and so I'll remember something like that. And it's almost 8 PM and I'm like, I think. Success Friday may have passed me by.
I sort of think maybe like, Win Wednesday would be easier, because it's in the middle of the 
week. 
Sundi: Fair. 
Camille: thinking about this exact 
same topic 
Owen: You got to schedule those, slacks, you know, like say post this on Monday, 
right when everyone's awake again. 
Sundi: Small wins can be pretty important for new developers as well. Scott, do you do anything like that in your various forums and such? 
Scott: Highlighting small wins on any regard is something that we try to do. Whether it is. Something that I'm doing day to day, for instance, the syntax website, syntax. fm is something that like I code on all day, every day, I use it as a playground to learn things with, and, when things are going right or wrong, it doesn't matter, there's still an opportunity to share and put that out there, especially, most recently we used.
 Some tools to improve loading time because we had a blocking script on our page. And instead of trying to act too cool about that blocking script, right, we're supposed to be experts here. We took it as an opportunity to say, hey, we had a blocking script on our page. Here's how we solved it. Here's a quick win.
We did this, , really fast. And you can use the same technique to replicate this type of thing on your end too. , so I think just highlighting. Those types of things. Like even as professionals here, we make mistakes. We have bugs, we have problems, we fix them, we work on them. How do we make it, feel like, hey, everybody's got this stuff and if you hit this stuff, you are, , part of this community too. By doing, , the same things we're all doing.
Owen: So we have conferences, we have our forums, we have our discords, we kind of still have Twitter, X, whatever you want to call it, , We'll see what, what happens next year. Let's see what else meetups. So I know Sundi, I don't know. You don't, you don't like to necessarily toot your own horn, but your organizer of the DC elixir meetup, we've got a holiday party, 
Sundi: which 
will have 
already 
happened, , so come to 2024 holiday party virtual um, no, yeah, we've been doing that every year for, this is the third year straight and it's almost always a last minute endeavor. Not quite as last minute as the first year. The first year was like a weekend where people like, the last weekend people were working and somebody was like, oh, it'd be cool to hang out or holiday party and I was like, we could do that.
We could do that. And then I like, I sent out a poll and got it together. But it like two days later with sponsors and everything and I think the last minute nature of that kind of made that I love surprising people with things they are not expecting. , we still have sponsors. We have the most sponsors ever for this particular one, Raffling Books.
 Virtual books are great prizes because we like to include everyone from, , across the globe. So it's really hard to say, oh, we're going to send you a, a mug or swag when it's going off to Japan or, or, you know, the other side of the planet for most folks. So. Virtual books are pretty good. 
Owen: We're going to send you a 
Sundi: New PDF 
Owen: or an e book. Yeah, 
Sundi: One really easy meetup idea that kind of took place recently in DCElixir that I think, Scott, you might be interested in, , for new developers as well , is just like a pair programming night. We did that recently and I was just like, , bring some code that you're allowed to show and let's kind of walk through it and The last one, Yordis, who was on this, season previously, came and really, , just took it and started, , highlighting on people's screens and suggesting really cool ways of, refactoring code if you were interested in doing a particular thing, think about it at a higher level.
I was just like, wow, , this is really inspiring to see. So shout out Yordis. Thank you. But also there were some newcomers. One person had only been programming in Elixir for about a month. and he was really interested in, in learning and he felt, you know, again, comfortable to come and show his code and not get it torn apart, but you know, get suggestions and that was just very fun and a very easy meetup idea when literally no one, no 
one comes forth with 
a 
talk. 
Scott: Yeah, we did something that we were calling syntax highlight, and that was like a, a series that we would do where people would show up and submit their website and this is all on podcast. So it's a little bit harder to do, but we discuss what's working or not working about their website as a means of trying to highlight community members to say, all right, we're going to give you.
 Time to share your work, but we're also going to make it productive. We're going to take it apart and say, all right, let's take a look at your HTML structure. Are we missing any accessibility things? What could be tuned up about the design? So it was like, almost like office hours to help, , build up people's portfolios or even online presences and stuff like that.
Owen: I'm kind of curious. We're, a, programming podcasts. We like to keep things, positive and light. I'm curious if , let's say we've got a P.R . Opened for community interactions and we see some things we want to constructively criticize or like, tweak them out of our, our, the things we see in our communities, what are some things you've seen that you would like to Either encourage or discourage in communities , either online, in person, or otherwise, Camille? 
Camille: that's really hard to say, , for the women who code DC, there hasn't been any consistent negative patterns. It's more about, trying to get people to be more engaged . contextually, , out of, , now over 200 chapters, we're the third largest, , and consistently in the top most active one.
But, and Sundy, I'm sure you can talk about that, it used to be so much more active. And trying to figure out where that spark is , again, has been, that challenge. we've gotten some, new, more junior directors in, so I'm hoping work with them and leverage that energy. But, we haven't, thankfully had really any major discipline or personality clashes in recent tenure. I'm not saying there hasn't ever been, um, or it's just, not 
post pandemic.
Owen: Oh, everyone chilled 
out. So community 
the civilization got more civilized. That's a 
surprise. 
Great to 
hear 
Scott: Hmm. Uh, yeah, 
Owen: Scott, what about you Have you seen, , either some great interactions you'd like to see more of, or some things maybe that I think what happens sometimes are people are not always aware of how they're affecting other people and how the behaviors are not necessarily constructive to community.
But , I guess the overall topic here is keeping our communities healthy, right? Making them so that we all want to keep, staying engaged or. Increasing engagement to camille's point. 
Scott: Well, you know, I think it all starts with having , something objective that you can point at, like a sign to point at, right? Like, , code of conduct for our community. It's pretty important, because then you can say, Hey, you're not just doing something that makes me feel uncomfortable.
You're doing something that violates these terms, it becomes less emotional and more like. factual. Hey, you, you're having these issues these ways. , we have had situations where, there was community members and like a discord being 
, just maybe rude or, saying inappropriate things and nothing to the point where it would be like an immediate, you got to get out of here, but more like, Hey, just so you know, you know, we had some people letting us know that what you said made them uncomfortable in this way.
And people adjusted. , I think a little bit is like knowing . Who your community is. And , this was a person who was very active in our community and they weren't , you could tell their intentions were fine, but just that the way they were expressing themselves wasn't fine.
It's easier when you have a small enough community that you can get to know everybody where, you can understand intentions a little bit more but in the same regard Yeah, having that code of conduct is really important for any growing community or or just you know Having clearly defined internal rules about what works and what doesn't what people are okay with and what they're not okay with, you know I've always been of the mind of especially, you know being on YouTube for 12 years now or so, do you get a lot of ridiculous comments on YouTube that are not there for anything?
They're not there for anything other than somebody venting or, , just intentionally being rude. And like, I've, I've no, no hesitation to delete any of that stuff. If it's not helpful for the community, all it's going to be doing is alienating people, get it out of here.
Owen: I think, yeah, on the tough side. Yeah, I think some of the things I've seen, IRL, so like in real life, situations are, people who are extremely passionate about, maybe an opinion, let's say about how things are structured or whatever it might be, programming stuff and they get into a conversation and they ask questions and they just won't let the conversation move on past, you know, it's kind of end point.
 So I think that happens sometimes, but these things are typically resolved diplomatically. I haven't seen any like knockdown drag outs or anything crazy that happened, you know. 
Sundi: it definitely happens in like smaller meetups. , it hasn't happened to me in a while, but I mean, opening up to pair programming night, I was a little bit worried too about, okay, I don't know. who's coming with what code. I don't know if they're trying to solve a 30 year old bug or their little pet project bug.
Right. So you really have to be open and dynamic. And so one thing I was thinking about was like, okay. How do I, not control the situation, but make it so that I don't feel like I'm cutting anyone off. I'm giving everyone an equal chance to kind of speak up and chat. So, I just, at the beginning, was like, who's here with some code for us to look at?
Then I took the number of people who said that they had, you know, something to look at, divided our, our time by four, and then kept us to an agenda. And if there's literally only one skill set I have, it's keeping people to an agenda. That's it. Or one that I had to pick is like my number one. So, um, I did feel good about that.
But I think, you know, for folks who are trying to Do things that maybe they're more uncomfortable with or like they're not as good at maybe having a co organizer of any of any sort to help bounce off of, , Oh, hey, didn't you have that idea or something like, you know, like just tag somebody in to give you a sounding board and a little bit of a helping hand can always be helpful in any, in any community situation, whether it's hosting a meetup or hosting a conference, emceeing, I emceed ElixirConf two years ago and, , having a co emcee, not that I was worried about anything, but when the main keynote of the day couldn't function because, Chris McCord couldn't get into his laptop and we had 30 minutes of dad jokes, Amos, shout out Amos, couldn't have done it without you, man. 
Owen: Oh, the epic, uh, dad joke, 
how do I describe that debacle, 
right? Yeah, I 
mean, it never happened again.
, Right. So, I think another aspect of community is, and something I maybe we don't always think of as part of the community, but open source, right? Like we're, we're all building, 
if we're writing code, we're, you know, I don't know what the percentage would be a lot.
We're writing a lot of code on top of other people's code. 
And, we've got a community , of course, through GitHub, we've got open source repos. We can just look at the source code, you know, go into issues and PRs and discussions. We've also got, 
 JavaScript, Elixir,
Java packages, PHP packages, , packages of all kinds, dependencies, , that's been a kind of an interesting thing as I've listened to podcasts and, maintainers of these packages, you know, I think, uh, At different times, people will struggle mentally with just the kind of the bandwidth required to maintain these things.
And I think especially once they're extremely popular and all the demands that people make , on those maintainers. I don't think this is an Elixir problem or a JavaScript problem. , this is just like a human problem, right? What's the secret sauce for maintainers that do this 
long term? 
Scott: I think for me. A system being one of the keys to success. We talked to a lot of major project maintainers on syntax. , and the ones who have it figured out the ones with minimal issues and closed pull requests, they all have really good systems. All issues must have a reproduction, does not have a reproduction.
It's getting closed, you know, or if, I mean, if it's an appropriate solution there to have a reproduction, those people who have it figured out, and spend the time in the infrastructure there, make sure that the tests are passing and, , your continuous integration set up and stuff, I think those are the people that have it.
The smoothest. Now I I'm starting to get into this a little bit more. I've always done open source work myself. I commit a lot to the Svelte community in terms of community packages. But now, the syntax site is something that we right now have four open pull requests. , three of which are from community members who have just decided , they wanted something changed on the website.
So they're going to make a pull request. And that's something that we like to enable for our community because it helps them feel connected but also gives them a chance to work on a bigger project like this or, or again make an exchange in something that they use. Uh, so for us, I'm now in this role where I'm having to.
Do a lot more of these open source, , PR reviews and, and things like that. and it's hard not to want to just merge everybody's work because they spent time on it. I am a, , sensitive person in that regard. So like somebody did some work, I'm going to be like, Oh, I feel like your work should be in the website, even if it maybe shouldn't..
, so I, I think it's all about having that system ahead of time. That way, again, it's, all systematized and you're not having to think too much about the actual 
process. 
Sundi: I guess in a similar vein, Camille, When there's some improvement, like, you're talking about raising new, junior directors and such, what kind of, , mentorship and professional develop , can you actually do to help raise someone up in a, community like Women Who 
Code?
Camille: Mentorship , is a pretty broad and complex, , topic, , in my experience, having both had mentors and mentees at the stage of my career, you really have to both, find ways to make it, , not repeatable, but consistent. 
it doesn't mean you have to, talk to each other, see each other every day, but figuring out a routine that works for you and the mentee or mentor is really crucial to making that , successful relationship.
my favorite sort of mentor, , there was a while where I was reporting directly to essentially my skip, and we would just go every other week for a walk. And just walk the neighborhood and talk about work and not work. finding ways that you both mutually bond over stuff , is key to making that relationship last long term.
Like, I'm still, , friends with that, , that person even though, , we both have moved to different companies over the years. specifically in the context of, , Women Who Code, I had a mentor who was a director, and she really pushed me, like, the first, , job at, my second Women Who Code event was, like, hey, we just need somebody to open the door, and if anybody needs to, like, you know, they have a locked bathroom, , help out, would you be able to do that?
, and that whole thing has just bloomed over the years because , mentorship is really a long game both sides of the relationship have to be invested in not necessarily key goals, but, trying to make sure that progress is happening. If you get to a level where you're working with a mentor and you're not progressing, you probably need to find a new person
and 
that's really key to
growth. 
Sundi: And it's not always a bad thing either. It's just, , the nature of life. I think one of the hardest things about mentorship in a community environment instead of a work one, like we're both engineering managers day to day, but we both, you know, help and run communities. , delegation is something that we talk about a lot and , Management classes, and training courses, and how to level up as a manager, make sure you delegate this, and, and that, and we just, all of it goes out the window when you're planning a meetup, or a conference, or, , a weekly, , Wednesday wins thing.
 You don't have to do it. But it's your idea and as a volunteer you feel like you need to do it. You don't want to just put that on someone else, but when you're raising up new folks into leadership, or you just need to make it actually work it's better, , to bring other folks in and that's a more healthy way to foster good relationships and also bring in new folks and just see a little bit of consistency.
So if anyone's having a little bit of trouble being consistent with some of that stuff, just delegation is, is a nice tool for that . 
We just need that reminder sometimes. 
Owen: I'm curious about, there's like a, a changing kind of something in the water about is diversity and inclusion really important and valuable?
I I'm starting to see people asking that question and I, I see the value of, of having more voices in a community. I'm curious if we have thoughts about what do we get when we bring more people into a community who otherwise would maybe be excluded or wouldn't have their voice represented? Camille, do you have some, thoughts on that? 
Camille: Yeah, it's, a key focus, for women who coded before local chapter and global I guess I look at it through the lens of, , and I could, I could have the statistic, , wrong, but we're 
calling, About, , after two years in tech, , women have gotten STEM degrees,
 About 30 percent of them will leave within those first two years.
And then, like, in the lens of, like, ten years, about 60 percent of them will leave , , STEM roles. And so, 
A lot of what we want to do is to foster that community so people feel there's something to work towards in tech and see those other wins and successes. So even if their day to day right then, isn't going great or isn't progressing, that there can be a brighter future in the long run.
Cause a lot of, a lot of it is not just Getting hired, like, I see a lot of content on the internet around how to get your first job. But it's, it's really hard to get your third job . It's really hard to get your fourth job. And, , I know I've deeply benefited from the network, , at Women Who Code and DevOps DC.
 Keeping me involved and keeping me included and in the loop and knowledgeable about, different avenues I wouldn't have found on my own., Like my, four year detour into government 
contracting. 
Owen: Or here detour.
 When you look at it through that lens of like to provide a, not a platform, but like a base, like a home base, for people, , to congregate, to communicate, to be invested in. It's really important as that base grows to be diverse, and to make sure you continue to leave that space open so that people feel invited to join in and that's how you have a healthy community.
Owen: And Scott, are there like, other efforts or It's a, it's a hard problem to solve, right? you're trying to bring people in who may have been rejected before and you have to rebuild trust sometimes after trust has been evaporated or, destroyed in some ways.
So how do we do this? How do we fix it? Scott, tell 
me. 
Scott: well, I think, I think there's a, , responsibility on the parts of people who have voices. to lift up other voices. , that's something that I think we, we certainly try to do is to get more. Voices, more diversity in voices, more diversity in experiences around. It's not about lifting up one person.
It's about, having the the bigger voice be there so that people do feel like this is a place for people like me, , no matter what you're doing. We're all here to learn the code at the end of the day, but if the only people who are getting that opportunity to have that voice are, people that.
Are of a certain type, then, that excludes a lot of people. So I think it's a matter of the people who, who do have that platform. It's their responsibility to put other people on their platform, , to, , make sure everybody feels like they're included.
Sundi: Yeah, what's, really nice about, , the virtual kind of setup , for meetups especially is, , We originally, you know, when we met up in person, had mostly D. C. folks, a lot of government contractors who had fallen by the waysideno, I'm kidding. , they were happy with their jobs, but they often couldn't do Elixir in their day to day.
And, what we see more now in the virtual space is Folks from the literal other side of the planet, almost every single one of my meetups has somebody who's in a totally different time zone, it's 8am their time, they really wanted to hear the talk, or they wanted to pair program, or what have you, and I always appreciate that, I never know who I'm going to expect from which time zone, which country, and it's really cool, , because you hear things about Elixir communities in China, or you hear things about the Elixir community in Kenya, and , there are different challenges that they face, different employment things, different, I mean, not often tech things, but sometimes, you know, you never know what comes up, and I really do appreciate that, and I'm exposed to that because Elixir DC, or DC Elixir, I feel kind of funny, , maybe not changing the name of it, but I feel like the roots of it is, is kind of helpful, , but it is a very interesting time now that we're, Like focused on virtual, but then Camille at first when I saw that holiday party, I was like, oh, that's a virtual.
Wait, the Excel space? The Excel space? I remember that space. That's a real space. That's a physical space. Not in the metaverse. So it's interesting. We're in an interesting hybrid time.
Owen: Yeah, I think remote meetups are, great for this. we, now I can, I can go to a meetup, we can have a call, we can have guests on who are halfway across the globe we couldn't like, afford to fly guests to Baltimore or, Dallas or whatever to, be on the podcast.
So yeah, that's, that's really helped us a lot with, diversity just on 
this particular podcast. 
Sundi: Mm hmm. 
We've had phenomenal 
guests from all over the world on this podcast. 
 
Owen: This season some of my favorite conversations have happened after we stopped recording whenever the guests start peppering each other with questions.
So I'm going to ask you now, Camille, Scott, do you have questions for each other about your 
Communities? 
Scott: Your community, feels like, , because it is DC based, correct? So that it's a big difference to have it be a more localized community. Are there any challenges that you specifically notice around having it be a localized community? 
Camille: Yeah, , DC is the number one, , in the nation for, , continuing to engage in remote work. a Lot of places that used to, , sponsor events, sponsor and host events just aren't there anymore. , they've gone 100 percent remote, given up their office space. my division in my company, has gone a hundred percent remote.
a lot of places that used to be hubs of like, like we used to have a really devoted Python track and a really devoted, , Was it the Java track? Or was it the data science track? And both of them had a set space where they were there every, uh, every week. Like Tuesdays and Thursdays, like clockwork.
And both those buildings are just gone. , And so that's just been the, the reality. , , we're trying to figure out, , sort of long term sponsorship. , from places that might not be able to host or might not be a fit, , so with like, you know, Quark, , contributions at the beginning of the year is where 501c3, so it's, it's really, at least that part, it's, relatively easy to take donations, but it's something, , I don't personally have experience with and, a lot of that, knowledge base of directors , who knew how to work those angles.
, knew who to talk to, aren't there? And so it's all about rebuilding that community Rolodex. I'm fascinated with like how you have kept a podcast community going. , and a, non linear learning community going for like four plus years.
Scott: Yeah, I think the, the 
big. thing for me that's always been the most important is consistency, at the start it was every Monday or every Wednesday an episode would release, and then once we had a little bit more juice, we would do Monday and Wednesdays, now it's Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays, but even when I was doing my YouTube channel, it was, the consistency was the most important thing, where People know what to expect, when to expect it, and, you know, how much to expect.
The Monday episode is 30 minutes long. They know they're getting a 30 minute episode on Monday. And it's been that way for many years now. And, and I think just that general consistency. Is like the single best thing you can do to foster any sort of regular attendance on anything, whether that's a video or
even like meetups.
You know, the, the, the meetups I attended the most were the ones I could consistently plop into my schedule and always know they're gonna be at a specific time on a specific date. So I think that's a, an important thing that a lot of people miss out, or they'll do it for a little bit and maybe they'll do 10 videos in one week and then no videos in another week or whatever.
, but. People want to see that you're there. They want to see that you're, doing stuff and, being a part of that community. Another thing is I've always made it a point to be myself and be there in terms of, community spaces. So the discord I'm in the discord 24, seven chatting with.
People, and it's probably to my detriment to do that, but it's a net positive for the community. Right. And likewise, if somebody wants to tweet at us about something or message us on even TikTok or Instagram, we're responding. I'm responding. I'm, I'm doing my very best to, you know, make people feel connected to us.
Sundi: as somebody who doesn't consistently remember to post meetup things until the 
virtual holiday party appears, , I feel seen, but, uh, that's okay. I've got another pair programming night I want to get on 
the calendar for January, and I think I might just slot that into, , every month where we don't have a speaker, which I think is fine.
That, that's at least something consistent, so thank you for that one, 
Scott. We could probably talk about, suggestions, tips, tricks, the secrets of the trade all day long, , but I appreciate this conversation so much. We're just about , at time, so I'd love to open it up to, see if you have any final plugs or ask for the audience, , social media side projects, how to get involved or, how people can support you in your various 
efforts. 
 Camille, why don't we start with you ? 
Camille: Awesome. , for anything Women Who Code DC, if you're interested, , we have, , Twitter and we also have a GitHub. , that's just going to be the full name on both of those. , the global org is womenwhocode. com and they've been making, , a really big push to make , , content. Consistently available. , so there's content in probably like 30 languages now.
And so it's really interesting, , as their YouTube has grown. They've also run a podcast, which I've had the ability to be on before. The one side project I have right now is remoteworkcalc. com. I haven't touched in a while, but if you want to quickly figure out how much money you've saved by, , not commuting, twice a day, every day, it's, uh, fascinating and you'll sort of want to pull your hair out.
Scott: Nice. , I will plug the Syntax Podcast. We have three weekly episodes where we talk all things web development, mostly JavaScript focused. So if you're JavaScript, curious here, yeah, check us out. We'll, we get into beginner topics as well as kind of what's happening in the, the industry at a whole and anybody who's followed JavaScript knows there's a new framework every other week.
So we talk about all that stuff and what you need to know. So Syntax, uh, fm is the website or just. Syntax in any podcast player.
Owen: Awesome. Well, thank you both for joining us, Sundi, I think it's time for us to Psyduck out. We did it. Yes. All right. Well, thank you again for joining us and we'll be back next week for more, Jigglypuff puns, Pokemon. What is it? 
Sundi: Words, Owen, words. 
Owen: I, blew my own mind. Pokemon. Pokemon jokes. Yes. We'll be back next week with more Pokemon jokes.
Sundi: See y'all later. 
Outro: Elixir Wizards is a production of SmartLogic. You can find us online at smartlogic. io, and we're at SmartLogic on Twitter. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a review. This episode was produced and edited by Paloma Pechenek for SmartLogic. We'll see you next week for more as we branch out from Elixir. 
Yair: Hey, this is Yair Flicker, president of SmartLogic, the company that brings you this podcast. SmartLogic is a consulting company that helps our clients accelerate the pace of their product development. We build custom software applications for our clients, typically using Phoenix and Elixir, Rails, React, and Flutter for mobile app development.
We're always happy to get acquainted even if there isn't an immediate need or opportunity. And, of course, referrals are always greatly appreciated. Please email contact@smartlogic.io to chat. Thanks, and have a great day!