8 Bits
8 Bits
8 Bits with Joe Karlsson!
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This week we are joined by Joe Karlsson, Developer Advocate at MongoDB!
Follow Joe on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JoeKarlsson1
Follow Chloe on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChloeCondon
Follow Brandon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheCodeTraveler
We're back.
Brandon Minnick:We're back.
Chloe Condon:You know what that sound means? generic song countdown back on Wednesday for a bit. How are you doing, Brandon?
Brandon Minnick:I'm so good. It is a just a beautiful week here in Napa. The sun shining, the weather's warming up, you can walk around outside with a T shirt on again. It's a great time to be alive.
Chloe Condon:I Oakland has been beautiful as well. I took a lovely stroll around the neighborhood for the first time in a long time. And it was nice to just be out and about even if it was I took a bus Franzen for the first time since the quarantines started and I was the only person on the bus. It was like a limo. I felt like a very fancy lady. So it was a weird moment. In a very, very strange time. But you know, yeah, we're we're almost I think we're coming up on a year anniversary of this show, Brandon. Yeah,
Brandon Minnick:speaking of quarantine.
Chloe Condon:Yeah,
Brandon Minnick:we, I believe we kicked off in May 2020. I want to say it was right around the time of the Microsoft build conference, if I remember correctly,
Chloe Condon:right. Yeah, we're gonna have to do something big.
Brandon Minnick:Oh, man. I know. It all depends. Like what what will we be able to do in May? Can we get together to studio again? Ah, that'd be Oh my God,
Chloe Condon:we could sell merch at a live show. Imagine at the Microsoft reactor live eight bits. Imagine Oh, my gosh, I'll get vaccinated hope this happens.
Brandon Minnick:That's the dream. And yeah, like more vaccines keep coming out. They keep getting approved. So who knows? Maybe that'd be amazing.
Chloe Condon:We'll see. A girl can dream. What have you been up to brands on what's been going on in your world? Oh, gosh.
Brandon Minnick:So did something really cool. This week, there's a Xamarin show or the Xamarin show here at Microsoft. And I got to come on as a guest for a couple episodes this week. We we just recorded them yesterday. So they're obviously not out yet. But I can give you a sneak peek. Let me
Chloe Condon:go to watch these on YouTube.
Brandon Minnick:The Xamarin show? Yeah, they're all they're all available on YouTube. But what we were talking about yesterday, was an async command stuff. And specifically, there's a there's something called the Xamarin community toolkit, which is kind of exactly what it sounds like. It's a community owned and operated GitHub repo for the Xamarin community. And so it's all cool things that you probably have copy pasted code like this from Xamarin app to Xamarin app. It's also a lot of new cool tools that'll make your app look better and save your time. And I've been helping out a lot with that. So adding code, reviewing code, approving code, all that fun stuff. And one of the things I added was the async command. And so we did a couple episodes Xamarin show yesterday, not sure when they're gonna air because we've got to get them in the pipeline, and Microsoft's got to edit them and make them look pretty. But if you want a sneak peek, you can check out aka.ms slash async command sample. And you can see the sample app that I made for the show. And once the show is published, I'll also add the YouTube link to that GitHub repo as well. So been a really cool week so far.
Chloe Condon:Nice. While exclusi we're getting we're getting some behind the scenes of what's in the content pipeline, only available on eight beths.
Brandon Minnick:That's so fun. For all my Xamarin developers out there.
Chloe Condon:I'm super excited to check it out. I'm gonna Meanwhile, I don't do as much Xamarin so I'm going to do in sync instead of async. Let's see what have I been doing this week? I Ooh. So I on Mondays have been streaming with that project. And we finished our final lecture our third and final lecture last week. Last we spoke. We're we've been playing with the Microsoft face API. I think I talked about this before Brandon that we were detecting beards and images. Oh, that's right. Yeah, like we had a photo of my boyfriend holding a pancake have a picture a 3d printed pancake of his beard and it was able to detect both of them fascinating stuff. But starting this week, the lectures are over all of our big project students are now working on their final projects. So myself and my pal Adrian who works over at career, as well as former friend of the pod, guest loreena, our clown turned engineer, friend, we're all building live on stream. So you can see us struggle and, you know, being things on StackOverflow, I asked you to help us debug, but we are from scratch, working with the wall, a couple things, we're going to use an Azure function to help trigger, which actually, this is going to be helpful, we're gonna have to replicate this for ourselves, Brandon, we're gonna automatically trigger a message that can be sent via email via text via Whatever method you want. That will notify folks when we go live, so people can sign up through a signup page. So we can have the eight bits, you know, notification signup page, people can choose how to get notified through slack through, you know, text message through however they want. And then whenever we go live, whenever there's an action from the twitch API that we're doing the live stream, they will get the notification. So we are building that from scratch. Live on camera every Monday at 5pm pacific standard time on the bit project, twitch channel. And come check it out. I'm tweeting about it all the time. You can follow me on Twitter, if you want to know when that's happening until the bot works. And then I won't have to it's literally solving a problem in my life. Because you know, this Brandon, like before we go live, we're always like, Oh my gosh, we got to sweep like how do we
Brandon Minnick:we got to do that right now. literally saw me look distracted. But I know shoot I did.
Chloe Condon:And it's I love it. Because you know, when I think back to like, the early projects that I built, especially when I was first started a program, they were always solving real world problems for myself. And this is a true thing that causes me so much anxiety and stress. If you've ever streamed before, you know, like the dance and the circus of like, Okay, I'm going to go live. And he did tweet Oh, no, I didn't post it on this place. So I'm really excited to just automate and just not have to spend the first five minutes of my stream worrying about telling people that I'm streaming, marketing.
Brandon Minnick:And there's so many there's so many channels, so many outlets like you could be anywhere from Facebook Live to twitch to YouTube, right? Where Where do I subscribe to find you. So yeah, that sounds like a great tool. And it definitely solves a problem. And even for this show,
Chloe Condon:and I'm super excited to just play with a new API, the twitch API is brand new to me. So incorporating that, incorporating that into the Azure function and throwing some courier in there, it's gonna be we're gonna have a lot of fun. So come and join us on Mondays. It's fun time we've got let's see, we've got to dive roll and a clown engineer trying to get their first job real job building a project. What could go wrong? Look at possibly go wrong?
Brandon Minnick:very stereotypical kind of street.
Chloe Condon:Yeah. Well, let's see. I'm trying to think Is there anything before we bring our guests on anything else we should cover? I did get the new Mac Book. And I'm very thrilled to report that I streamed last night I streamed Animal Crossing the first time last night. And this thing y'all is silent, like a Prius. Like quiet. My fan wasn't going off. I know this is a Microsoft show, but I just got to share new devices that help enable your work to go faster and incredible thing.
Brandon Minnick:I don't think it has a fan. Yeah, right. If it does, definitely correct me in the comments, but I'm pretty sure the new MacBook with an M one processor, completely fanbase and so you never get the the joys of that background white noise when you start coding or streaming.
Chloe Condon:Do you know what I picture in my head mentally when people say fanless so you know how there's like propeller fans I pictured the like Dyson fan like the circle one and like its fan.
Brandon Minnick:fan blades,
Chloe Condon:no blades. Man, well, I will say I really really love this device. But and we were talking about this briefly before the stream and I wish we all could. It looks very clean back here. But something that I cannot wait for is for everything to just be USBC or just one unit. I know this is never going to happen ever. It's wishful thinking but I ended up streaming at 2am last night mainly because of majority I thought this will take a couple of minutes to set up. Y'all be different daisy chaining I am doing I'm like waiting. I wish that everything was a universal standard plug. I say as I have four different kinds of USB here.
Brandon Minnick:I recently broke down and bought a USBC hub. Because just until just recently, you you could buy a hub that connects your computer via USB C but it didn't have any USB C ports on it. Right so I don't know that I'm sure there's a technological reason behind it. But yeah, just recently, you can order one that has USB C ports on it, which would be great. So all the streaming equipment that I normally plug in my laptop can plug into the hub. But it also has all the other ports you would expect like Ethernet ports, SD card readers USB a so it's just the works. Wow, I can't wait for it to
Chloe Condon:link me to that later because I am drowning. And I'm today tonight. My goal is cord management. Like it's an eyesore and I want to clean it up but oh my goodness, I just so many USBC converting things going on in my life right now. But enough about USBC should we bring on our guests? Is it time? Okay, I guess I'll do the intro because I I'm trying to think where I first saw this human being on the interwebs but this is this person has been a presence on the internet. Lately for me that has given me so much joy. I am not on tik tok I, I don't understand it, but I really enjoy consuming it in other forms. Specifically, we've talked about Ratatouille the musical before we've talked about sea shanty Tick Tock before Brandon. But this person brings a lot of joy to my timeline. Because it is rare that I see technical content that makes me laugh. And I shouldn't say rare, I should say it's a joy when I see it, and it pops up in my timeline. And I am really, really excited to talk to our guests today because I think this is a really interesting topic, right? Like, what makes technical content stand out and be relevant and fun and interesting. So without further ado, welcome to the show, Joe.
Joe Karlsson:I had to adjust my white balance because he made me blush.
Chloe Condon:It's interesting, because during this core I feel like I have made online internet friends with many people I have not met in real life and you and I bonded over memes very early. Yeah. And this quarantine 90 day fiance. Yes.
Joe Karlsson:Sir, any fans out there? Let us know in the comments. I would just love to chat with you about it was up to chat
Chloe Condon:with you off off camera. But Joe tell the lovely humans at home a little bit about yourself. Give us your give us your your Marvel origin story.
Joe Karlsson:Yeah, I'll give you an elevator pitch. You know, it's so funny. I get asked this all the time, and I never had something prepared. I'm like a deer in the headlights. Give us Who are you? I'm sick. Let's stumble through it together. My name is Joe Carlson. I'm a developer advocate. And I'm a software engineer and I work for a little database company called MongoDB. Developer advocacy. I make videos I make tutorials, blog posts, I speak at conferences, I chit chit chat with lovely people like Brandon, Chloe here today and all y'all. What else do I do I make democratic videos? I don't know, I think I feel like we're just trying to make like programming fun and accessible and like, make cool stuff that people care about or don't or make or make them.
Chloe Condon:Like how do you make some of these? I think that's the question. And as developer advocates are asking all the time is how do we make what can be considered kind of boring, mundane content? Like how do we make that in context? Interesting. They know Brandon, you do that a lot with good trends, trying to make it useful and like interesting. Like, it's a it's a very interesting profession that we are in to make entertaining content a very deep, serious technical content.
Joe Karlsson:No, it totally is nothing from the intro to like making funny videos. It's I don't know, it's not new, right? It's not rare that people are making some really great stuff out there. But like, it's just, I don't know, it's I feel like we're, everyone's very towards like, serious documentation, which is great. We need that. But like, also, I feel like we just need a bit of flavor in their tool. But you know, that's hard to do,
Brandon Minnick:yet and it and it really says something about being able to take a difficult technical concept, being able to break it down to kind of its bare minimum. Yes. And then teaching that as the concept and then also adding on to it piling on to that and using that as your foundation. Yeah. That's, that's kind of how I think of my job as a developer advocate is like, yeah, I'm really just a teacher.
Joe Karlsson:Yeah, I totally agree. And yeah, I
Brandon Minnick:try to, I try to teach in the way that I wish my teachers taught instead of
Joe Karlsson:I say that all the time.
Brandon Minnick:I had so many teachers in high school that my favorite example is Do you ever learning about parabolas? And maybe not because it's a very underrated
Chloe Condon:I've heard this. For sure.
Brandon Minnick:Yeah. Y equals x squared. It's a parabola. And every parabola has this thing called a focus. And again, something I was taught in high school. And it was just like, there's no context to it. It's just like, this is the focus, you know, then you would have a test. And it's a find the focus, and it's like, okay, learn it, check, move. Yeah, yeah. And it wasn't until my first job out of college, I did a lot of work with satellite technology, communications. And I learned that every satellite dish, well, most satellite dishes are parabolic in shape. And they're parabolic and shaped. Because that focus is the actual point where every will say, RF, energy, all the signal that comes into the dish gets reflected back and concentrated in that focus point. And it's literally, if you ever look at an antenna, even the ones on the side of your house, they have that arm sticking out with the little little receiver on the end. That's because the dish collects all of that signal, and then focuses it so it all gets amplified together in that one point.
Joe Karlsson:And a magnifying glass light, kind of,
Brandon Minnick:like blew my mind learning about that as an adult, because I had quote, unquote, learned it in high school, but like the teachers didn't give any context. And so like, that's so important. When you're teaching something, you have to be able to break it down, give that context show these real world applications. And then we can start adding stuff out of that and making it more complicated. But
Joe Karlsson:yeah,
Chloe Condon:can I show you something an example of this, it makes me so excited. sharing my screen if you're not following be analytical, Cody's drag queen. There's two recently that I saw this makes me so so happy to see people explain very, very complicated complex topics. And very fun and interesting ways. This one is all about using data structures, sets, arrays, and queues and stocks and showing it with makeup wipes, like literally wiping with a makeup wipe. And then this other one recently, that's all about gender drop down menus about like, here's the top five worse implementations of, you know, gender input forms, and like, why they're bad. So I think this is such an interesting way. And, and what like, think about what you send your friends, right. Like in a DM, you're really good. Like, check this out. It's either something incredible, like, Oh, my gosh, this person discovered ice penguins, and pyramids somewhere, or it's like something really funny or interesting. And like, I think when we think about viral or like content, that's interesting. We need to think a lot about the audience. And I gotta tell you that this is my audience. Like I say, I'm like, I'm all about making this interesting and fun.
Joe Karlsson:I totally agree. Anna's content is amazing. And also, second, she's doing incredible work.
Chloe Condon:Get down on the show, we'll get
Joe Karlsson:you just retweeted a tweet. So yeah, no, I totally I actually use this example all the time for creating content. It's like, imagine you have a friend on Facebook, who's a realtor, and they're selling houses, like every day, they're just posting houses they have for sale up there, right? It's like, that's boring. I don't care. Like, I'm probably not gonna, like be engaged with that. But like, imagine this, this person starts writing content about like, how they flipped the bathroom, and it increased the value of their home by $10,000, or maybe a little bit education about why this neighborhood is doing well, or predictions about housing markets, or I don't know, whatever, right? Like, but the point is, like, instead of trying to sell me these houses, this person starts teaching me about their job and how that how that's working for them. That's something I might start sharing with my grandma. Like, you know, family friends, like that's, that's engaging, you know what I mean? Like, and the point that is like, I want we should be teaching like our jobs is to teach the community not sell them on something, or you know what I mean, that just like doesn't work. No one cares. I do want to say to the seven, make a lot of Tick Tock videos and the thing.
Brandon Minnick:Talk is that it's very good, by the way,
Joe Karlsson:thank you.
Chloe Condon:We will drop a link and,
Joe Karlsson:or whatever. Don't I don't care. It's a joke. Yeah. But Tick Tock is weird, because it's opposite. Like you like Instagram and Twitter. Like it's very creator driven. You like put it out there and it goes on someone's timeline. But Tick tock, like, if your content sucks, it doesn't promote it. Like it just dies. Like, I can, like push stuff that no one cares about, but it just doesn't get any views. Like you have to actually, it's like, totally retrained me on like, how to like, make stuff that people are actually engaging with? Because Yeah, you have you let the whole point of the platform, it's backwards. It's like community driven as opposed to creator driven, which is what we're used to as people are like, this content for the community. I don't know. I think
Chloe Condon:what's your favorite Tick Tock rabbit hole that you've gone down during Oh, this year.
Joe Karlsson:From Tick tock, um, like a dog training Tick Tock. Oh, oh god, I know it's so weird. Like, why am I am I like
Chloe Condon:Brandon's gone down, see Shanthi Tick Tock. Oh, yeah,
Joe Karlsson:I totally gone down. I know. It's like been blown up, though.
Brandon Minnick:So last week,
Joe Karlsson:yeah, old news.
Chloe Condon:Ratatouille, the musical tech. I think that's what like, clicked for me of like, Oh, so it's like, open sourcing art. And I enjoy. Maybe I will download this application. I'm so amazed. I
Joe Karlsson:got me that is so fun.
Brandon Minnick:Yeah, you gotta get a shout out to the comments. Best tech creators. Thanks, prati.
Joe Karlsson:I agree. I'm blushing. You guys are so sweet. This is so fun. Can you tell my boss
Chloe Condon:I recorded a video. We were talking about this before the stream. But there's really something to be said for things that are memory hooks for I used to give a whole talk on this on why it's important, especially when you're teaching children, I used to work in children's theater, community theater. And if you've never gone to a children's community theater show or attended one, let's just say I had to have a lot of Red Bull before to match the energy of four year olds that sign in the morning. So when I think about that, when you watch something like Sesame Street, you know, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, there's all these bright colors and lots of songs and kind of memory hook things to get you to remember things and something that I think a lot about as a developer advocate. We're all adults now. And we, I think we sit five minutes in meeting and we want to look at our phone. Right? So how do we like an audience and it's it's kind of amazing how very subtle changes even in a presentation or content, it can be a tweet, it can be a video, just making it relatable, and human, and not like marketing jargon synergy, like buy our product. There's really something to be said for authenticity. And I think that's really what drew me to you, Joe, and looking at a lot of your content was it made me laugh because it was real. And the same way that the TV shows Silicon Valley is hilarious because and cringy because it's too real. I think some of the content that I gravitate towards via technical or soft skills stuff is always the genuine relatable content.
Joe Karlsson:I think that's the future. I think that's the future. I don't know, it's a word we're, I don't know, like trying to find it just like traditional marketing doesn't work, right. Which is why we have jobs. Like we're developer advocates, I think we're good at talking to developer communities, but like, yeah, I totally agree like personality, like authenticity, vulnerability, and cool. I love that you're doing that with your twitch stream too. Like, I love doing that to like, I want my audience to see the blood sweat and tears. I want to see them. I want them to see me cry.
Chloe Condon:Why did literally bleed on camera?
Joe Karlsson:Okay, literally.
Chloe Condon:There's a vulnerability to live coding, like, this is a new thing for me that I like, I think back to you know what Brandon and I used to do giving talks and demos, you know, there's something to be said for. And Brandon's been doing this on the weekends with with our friend PJ, like, literally showing people your process, like here's how I do things. Here's how I look at StackOverflow to like, solve this problem, right? It's there's really something to be said for the realness of it. Like because you walk through a tutorial, and it you think is going to take 10 minutes, and it's like, okay, right, I have to open these docs and then go here, and then I need this NPM package. And like, you know, three hours later, you're finishing the tutorial, and I think that I've learned so much. That's why I've started streaming live coding stuff humans really scary, especially as a woman online, but I've learned so much from other people did I get like, I'm I it makes me feel like less alone.
Joe Karlsson:And it's hard. I mean, it feels effortless for a lot of people like Sue Hinton's like she crushes it. Right. But like, you're like moderating a chat. You're trying to like verbalize what you're doing and you're trying to solve like technical problems on the spot. Like it's improv. It is. It's like multitasking, improv. It's hard. It gets drawn out. The benefit, though I've loved is like if I get stuck on a bug, and someone in the stream is like, Oh, I saw that last week. Here's how you do it. Like, that's gonna lead to.
Brandon Minnick:So I was literally streaming as I close it. I streamed with my buddy PJ every Sunday on Twitch. And PJ has been on the show a couple times. He's learning to code trying to get a job in tech moving out of his current role in academia. But uh, yeah, we couldn't figure something out because we were PJs building a website and I make mobile apps so like, I I know how to code but I've never built a website before. Yeah, we were just stuck. And somebody in the chat was like, Oh, I think I could fix this if you just bring me on. So yeah, we just set him the low. He came to the stream, and walked us through it. And then the website started working. Oh my god, it was so
Chloe Condon:new or like a stranger or
Brandon Minnick:a it was something that PJ do. Yeah. So we're, we're comfortable bringing the mystery person on? Yeah, in the comments. There's been a couple folks that have also solved issues too. And like, we probably would have been hitting her heads against the wall for hours trying to figure it out. And she's like, yep, here's the line of code you need like,
Joe Karlsson:Brandon, that's a risky move, bringing a stranger on
Chloe Condon:our recent guest, Taylor actually hopped on the live stream with PJ and I to help us with our twitch setup stuff, being someone who worked at Twitch. So it's kind of cool. Like, you kind of get to crowdsource information like that literally happened the other day, when we were building shanaya bot, we're building this you know, Azure function, Twitter bot or Shania Twain bot, famously, of that we mentioned on the show before, but literally, Sinclair other previous guests show, Jeremy came, like literally was in the comment saying, oh, try it this way. And Adrian was saying, Oh, you know, do the regex this way and helped us we would have been stuck on this problem for probably an hour or two because we're not that familiar with regex. And I love that's like the one positive of having to stay home is like we're all able to kind of like co work together more in this weird pandemic way.
Joe Karlsson:Yeah, totally. No, that's so true. It's like a Yeah, I don't know where you guys remote before COVID hit or
Chloe Condon:kind of started I guess.
Brandon Minnick:Yeah. But traveled so much that we were rarely in the
Joe Karlsson:exactly right. I think a lot of people in position like we're pretty much remote. All of
Chloe Condon:my toys on my desk right now. I like to imagine had been living a toy story like Fantasy Life at Microsoft HQ SF for the last year. My desk every day.
Joe Karlsson:Gossip with them? Yeah. Okay, have you noticed this? I feel like like just water cooler gossip has just evaporated. I've been like so, like hungry for any sort of gossip? I don't know. It's like hard to like. It's like on slack. Just be like, Oh, did you hear about blah, blah blah? Or like, did you know this happened?
Chloe Condon:It definitely has changed company culture dynamic. Like I feel like you can much more control literally who you're in a room with because you're physically not in the room. So I think in a in an interesting way. Yeah, I've just been able to surround myself honestly, with with people that I would have already surrounded myself with but now more people because I think in in a pre COVID life, I'd be like, oh, proximity to me. But now there's a lot of cross, even like, across different continents and stuff, being able to do work with other co workers for seasons of serverless we worked with Microsoft Student Ambassadors all over the world and I don't know if I would have had the bandwidth. Like thought to do that pre COVID No, totally. Yeah, I
Joe Karlsson:totally agree. I feel like that's I don't know, this is just me but like COVID i i've been like getting my social needs met by like meeting people online. And I don't think that's true of everybody but it's been like really helpful for I don't know just like getting to know people are new people including like you and I have gotten to know each other online.
Chloe Condon:So I I have to Brandon will tell you like if we were to go to a meetup or a conference or something. I can be on there, but I have to recharge afterwards. And what I actually appreciate having like to work from home and having remote events is when I turn off that camera I can turn into the trash Goblin I truly am. I don't have to take Muni or Bart home or take an Uber home and like finally shed my lizard skin. I really can kind of limit you know, because there's also you know, going live events like lining up after your talk and the emotional energy that it takes them as an ambivert which is introverted extrovert I've never heard of it for people on the show. I really, I can turn it on. Like I can I love to communicate with people and I love to talk to people but I also I need my close time. Like if you ever saw me at a conference, I'm very alive in the room and then I go into my hotel room and like I'm watching 90 day fiance with like, you know, some chicken or something. But yeah, it's it's given me the personal space that I think I need.
Joe Karlsson:Like, clear, safer boundaries for like, yeah, I'm the same way. I'm Brandon. I don't know if you're the same way too, but like I feel like a lot of people on our roles are like are like that. So I think you have to have like, be the focus like make code which I think involves a little bit of introversion. Then you have to be like expert enough to like, jump on a stream like this or chat or speak or whatever, whatever, whatever you're doing, you know, I feel like I definitely have both.
Brandon Minnick:Yeah, I agree. And Josh in the comments or Joshua Joshua hunts world, saying, just being able to hug friends is something I miss a lot. And I empathize with that a ton. Being able to, I get to see somebody in person for the first time, who I haven't seen in almost a year. Now the other week, and we just had to, like, stand and wave at each other. Like, that's so good to see you. But don't come any closer. Yeah, there is something about that, that hug or that handshake that does make it feel a little bit more personal. But yeah, like we're talking about the beauty show that's hopefully gonna, hopefully, we're all getting vaccinated. Hopefully, we can get on the other side of pandemic. And hopefully, we can all kind of figure out and return to where we want to where we want to be. But yeah, I very much empathize with needing to recharge. There's something about being at a conference that is, I mean, not just physically exhausting, because you're standing and walking and doing that all day, but also just mentally exhausting. Having to have all these conversations meet people that don't rock I love it. But I could go for a walk and be standing all day without the mental overload. And it's very different, like heckler would say, but I get back the hotel is just collapse in bed, order up some some room service just kind of curl up into a ball. No, I don't want to talk to anybody.
Chloe Condon:Yeah, that's a very different hats, two very different skills. I think. You know, as developers, it's just like you said, Joe, like, sometimes we're behind the computer. And it's a very solo activity. But there's really something to be said for. I don't know, the our whole job is to be a developer advocate to advocate for developers. So the advocating part is a it's a different different skill. No, I
Joe Karlsson:think so too. I think so to be curious if anyone in the stream is watching, let us know. Like, Are you guys excited to come back to in person events? As it's like change the way you're learning this year to?
Chloe Condon:Yeah,
Joe Karlsson:I mean, of course it probably like roll solo, but yeah, I don't know. I feel like for me, that's changed a lot.
Chloe Condon:I feel like there's I miss, I miss Expo halls I miss like walking to different booths talking to different companies and like, learning about different products, like after you've given the talk and and communicating. Like, I remember at Ignite ignite the tour, we had a community section where we were featuring different startups that were local to the area. So in this case, I think it was in Milan, we had a bunch of local startups that were were there to share what they were doing and having an impact in the community. And I miss having those genuine face to face conversations. Like I feel like because we're a little bit more limited online, you're not going to have that conversation as you're leaving the venue or someone said, Oh, you know, I, I also started learning that way. Or like, Hey, I really enjoyed your talk. Like, let me tell you about this. So I think there's a lot I've heard a lot of people say I missed the hallway talks, like are not hallway talks, but sort of the hallway. Yeah.
Brandon Minnick:Talks. Joe, I know you have actually a TED talk coming out,
Joe Karlsson:coming up. Yeah. Yeah, I gave a keynote at the hackathon this year. It's called computer science is basically like just finding your community. I think I gotta find a better name for it. But yeah, I don't know that someone's organizing a TED talk and asked me if I would give it a I think I feel like I got to like, my site. I haven't written a speech before. I feel like TED talks are very like,
Chloe Condon:like Elvis. Fans of Legally Blonde.
Joe Karlsson:Yes, exactly.
Chloe Condon:I always believe in yourself.
Joe Karlsson:Yeah, I like, I feel like I need help like making a less chaotic version of the talk for for Ted, which, to figure out how that works. It's this summer, so I'm like, I have hopefully, it feels like a million miles away. But it's like, I think it's gonna be coming out in June. Also, I don't know what's gonna really work with like, online, I might just gonna record it in my living room. I don't know.
Chloe Condon:Well, have you seen this snap, chat camera filter. I'm using that to emphasize points on streams where I'm like, and in conclusion, thank you so much. And it zooms out if you haven't used this filter yet. It's a good dress rehearsal for you.
Joe Karlsson:That'd be so funny. actually giving a whole TED talk in that
Chloe Condon:Think about it.
Joe Karlsson:Oh ask see if that's allowed.
Chloe Condon:What is the topic of your talk?
Joe Karlsson:Oh, yeah, it's like, it's just like talking about my career a little bit. So I should give some background a little bit. I'm like really interested in art and tech. And I'm particularly love. I ran a hackathon in Hawaii, called the stupid shit and terrible ideas hackathon. We just like make Dumb fun things. All I do is like, is like an anti corporate hackathon. And like trying to make like, nobody is making dumb things. Just with for fun with your friends. Like we made like someone made a six foot cube Fidget Cube. Somebody made an app that texture mom, every website you go to in incognito mode.
Chloe Condon:I love this reminds me of sF sketchfest. They didn't do this after I saw it. But they did a comedy hackathon where they partnered engineers with comedians. They had all these, like, one of my favorites was a pay gap equity app where based on you know, if you're a woman black, like you know that you were able to determine how to split the bill based on who was paid the most fairly. Like, who make these things like I'm Daniel Baskin, of course on Twitter, who's doing such hilarious, you know, kind of funny, like verified homes on Twitter. And I love using tech in these silly ways.
Joe Karlsson:My person, the TED Talk to me about like art and tech and finding community and like how I fell in love with it through arts. But like, yeah, I totally agree. I'm like, I think that like computers and programming and tech, the internet is like the artistic medium of our generation. And I think everyone here and people watching the stream at home are like uniquely positioned to be able to explore that medium. It's like the defining the internet is a defining characteristic of our generation. And like, let's explore that artistically. I think there's a lot of place there. And I don't feel like and I feel like our industry really pushes people to like, want to, like, you gotta monetize every side hustle, and you got to wake up at 3am to make your stupid business that's gonna, you know, get funded, or like, who cares, right? Just like, make stuff because you like it, or don't who cares, right? Just like, I make stuff to learn. I make fun stuff to teach. I make fun stuff just got like it.
Chloe Condon:We had. I think jQuery is probably in the chat right now. I saw I saw them earlier. But we had a conversation about the first season of repulse drag race that happened during the pandemic, we wouldn't have had the creative, beautiful artistry that was crystal methods. I'm like a bird remote performance. Like there's so much that we're seeing now with being able to use like online, like drag, for example, light up costumes, being added to wearables makes me so masks to like masks with tech in them. Makes me so excited for the this generation is going to make such cool stuff. I
Joe Karlsson:know. IoT stuff being integrated. I don't even know what you could do that yet. I don't know. I'm definitely not like a I don't I'm not a big fashion. I don't know, like a lot about it. But they're like, just like the potential there. It's exciting. I you know, and I feel like that starts with like, people just messing around with it. And like figuring out what works or doesn't work. I'm obsessed with this line between, like, stupid and genius. I feel like it like feels dumb and you make it and sometimes like, so we were talking earlier about my IoT kitty litter box. Yes, that was that a thing was just like, I wanted to make a fun, silly little project. And it turns out is actually kind of useful. Like, right, I didn't really know until dawn it was gonna be like I make I may have just been a dumb thing I just throw away or whatever, just that kind of dies. But it's actually kind of useful. But I feel like that's where this stuff comes from, or like putting things like chips and things that have no right to have a chip in them. I like like, let's do more of that. Maybe you might find something and maybe not but who cares.
Chloe Condon:I love shout out to sailor hg on Twitter and Instagram and all the things I've really been enjoying. She recently melted down her Clipper card and put the Clipper card in a resin ring so she could just tap in with her ring. Oh, it's like the metro card here in the Bay Area.
Joe Karlsson:Gotcha. I'm in the Midwest.
Chloe Condon:Right right. And anytime I see a pair of air pods now I think of sealer HD because I always thought they look so silly. But she added the tassel earrings from Breakfast at Tiffany's to make them look more fashionable. So that intersection. That's what makes me so excited when I see people crafting with tech I Oh, I wish I knew the person's name. But I saw someone with a manicure, where she had a video screen on each fingernail. And I thought this is the coolest thing I've ever seen. I'll see if I can find that. But yeah, any sort of blend of arts and tech. What are some of your favorite projects that you've seen that have incorporated those things Joe?
Joe Karlsson:I don't even know I just like even like public art pieces. I've been exploring LEDs in my free time a lot, you can't see it right there. Hey, led thing I made back there. I don't know, it's got like public things for like pieces that change for, you know the weather or and you can like see things in real life? Ah, I don't even try to think. I don't know, I just like I meant to think of that I should put something together like my favorite projects, I think that'd be great idea. I the thing that gets me excited, though, is getting people getting excited about just making stuff.
Brandon Minnick:And you know, with Ian here in the comments saying that authors often talk about how they write books for themselves. And it turns out that a lot of people like it, yes. That's the analogy to coding and building things. And I agree with that so much. It's both apps I have in the App Store, where they're just fun side projects that I work on nights and weekends with the both apps that I made because I wanted them. Yeah, it was like, maybe somebody else would want them to and now now they have a couple 1000 monthly active users. And it's it's so cool to think like, there's people on the other side of the world, using my apps,
Chloe Condon:it's sharing your art with the world literally.
Brandon Minnick:Just like a selfish project. I was like, I wish this existed.
Joe Karlsson:Yeah. Yeah, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna make
Chloe Condon:people are always saying like, you know, what, what drew you to tech and I'm like, honestly, tech is digital crafting, like putting all these different pieces together. Cuz, you know, there's all these different components and API's and things you can put together and it's deeply, deeply technical, but you can make some really weird, funny, interesting, artsy stuff.
Joe Karlsson:Totally agree. A box of Legos. Yeah, I want to add one other thing to the comment that was just up but like, yeah, like we make we make things for ourselves, too. But also, we like I personally, I can't predict what's going to be useful or not to the people. It's just like, and some things blow up at them. Some things don't and like, that's okay. But I feel like for me, I've really had to like divorce. Like, the need to try to, like, make everything a hit. I just like the only thing that's important for me is just like produce, like just make things and just the things either kick off or they don't,
Brandon Minnick:you know, it's so true. And something I found is, you just can't predict what's going to be a hit. Like, you can. Yeah, like there's been projects I've worked on where I'm like, people are gonna love this. This is
Joe Karlsson:this is a billion dollar business here.
Brandon Minnick:Yep. Like I'm beget 1000s of people reading this blog post, biggest one all the time. And then like, a total dump, and I'll do something that takes like, five minutes, just kind of like on a whim, throw it out there. And then 1000s of downloads or views, like what so yeah, totally, just like you're saying, Joe, it's, it's more about just like keep creating, keep putting stuff out into the universe and will like something will eventually strike a chord with people.
Joe Karlsson:It'll take talking about it, promoting it. I don't know, I told it. My top one of my top GitHub repos all time is a I was teaching myself Angular in probably 2013 2014. And I made like an Angular Instagram feed. It was like learning, I was just learning how to code. I was just learning Angular, it's terrible code. It's crushing. I have no idea why it's so popular to this day. The hurts, like take it down, either. But yeah, I don't know. Just throw it up. And sometimes it clicks. It gets those Google SEO wins correctly, and people just so just find it. Just,
Chloe Condon:and we always, we always end up talking on this show about theme parks. This is a theme on the show. And we always get to it. But I think that like if someone had come up to me as a kid, because if people don't know, I discovered computer science a lot later in life, but if someone had told me, hey, that stuff you're doing on live journal, and my space and Neopets, and oh, that imaginary and stuff at Disney that you're really interested in. That's all computer science stuff. I think I would have been a little bit more willing to learn it even as a kid. And I think about that mentality with adult developers as well. Like, why should people care about using an Astro function? Well, I can, you know, demo it in a bunch of different ways that are practical, or I can make a fake boyfriend app that uses the Twilio API to text and pretend to be my boyfriend in awkward situations. So it's a lot about how to frame because we work in very deep technical things. But when you can make it relatable and interesting to people, I work with students on the Academic Team, so I'm always thinking about like, okay, Hello, fellow kids. How do we, how do we get you interested in learning how to use our products, but I think it comes down to what is like all of the stuff that I see being shared on tik tok and Instagram and even Twitter. The stuff that I see that's the most engaging is the authentic, funny, like, heartwarming stuff. So the more that I can put that into my technical content, the better. There's really cool people we had a story With a bit project recently, who created an IoT device using Azure that he could give to his grandpa to measure his heart rate, so if it's spiked or decreased, it would send an alert to him and I think about practical ways that this technology can be put into place and it makes me so excited not only for like the quirky fun stuff, but I'm like, Oh, right. There's a very practical use as well.
Joe Karlsson:You can make useful things. Yeah,
Chloe Condon:you don't have to make Mario Kart astrology I guess you can like identify people like you
Joe Karlsson:can save lives or make sense. You can You're right. We're you could also do this that's also
Brandon Minnick:visible and it gets great. And and Joshua was just commenting. We were talking about sometimes things take off and sometimes they don't and girlfriend has 500,000 followers on Tiktok and put ours into a video only get 1000 views and then throw something up that it takes 30 seconds and 1000s of plays.
Chloe Condon:Can I share a secret bow? If I ever tweet about Clippy minimum 100 likes. So there's like certain but I find but that's like why bring it up business psychologist specifically, anytime I tweet about anything, or share anything, even on my YouTube channel that involves a Furby it's one of my highest performing videos. Like I think there's something to be said for these memory hooks like this knowledge of music helps a lot. I think too when I think about different things that have helped like trigger things in my brain to remember them. So I take a very children's theater approach to
Brandon Minnick:development. So Joshua, tell your girlfriend she needs to make a Clippy video on Tick Tock Yes, maybe some insync in the background. Yeah. histologia boxes.
Chloe Condon:Music from a hit clip those little like a boom box Really? hit all the boxes. We're just giving this viral content away for free for
Joe Karlsson:You're welcome.
Chloe Condon:So Julie always asked everyone on the show about their favorite theme park and favorite park ride this question, um,
Joe Karlsson:okay. Yeah, yeah, great. Okay, so I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Yes, it's cold here. And no, we don't talk like we're from the movie Fargo. But I live next to the Mall of America. As a Nickelodeon studios theme park in it right now Chloe. It's like a small mini version inside of a mall, but it still exists
Chloe Condon:for us, right? It's
Joe Karlsson:all indoors. Also fun fact about the mall America. There's no heating in it. It's all human heated. like walking around. It's not weird. Anyway, it's probably safer theme park. Okay. I don't even know
Chloe Condon:the road trip. I go into this Mall of America Nickelodeon theme park
Brandon Minnick:will swing through St. Paul.
Joe Karlsson:Good idea. There is a bikini bottom plunge right on it's like a you know like an episode of sponge robbery like, goes straight down on the bus into the rock bottom. Wow. So fun Jays in the chat Who?
Chloe Condon:Whose answer was Dollywood, which I cannot wait to go to Oh. I've never been to Tallinn.
Joe Karlsson:Either. We've been taught my friends and I have been planning a road trip to Dollywood for years. First. Everyone gets
Chloe Condon:the vaccine or go into exactly
Joe Karlsson:exactly. It's like maybe like we're tentatively planning like two summers from now doing a Dollywood trip.
Chloe Condon:Yeah, we'll pick you up all the way.
Joe Karlsson:Oh, that's such a good one. Okay, thanks. J crew. Yeah, I want to go so bad. None of y'all y'all offended I would have
Chloe Condon:no but I hear that the live shows in itself are incredible. My dear friend Amy who I do the show coin base with was telling me she's been she's experience. It's beautiful that all our costumes are and everything but she said that this Dolly Parton Christmas. If anybody watched this, this Christmas special thing is basically Christmas in the square with Christine Baranski. And everyone is basically a movie version of these live show parables that happen at Dollywood and I'm just counting down the days to like and go
Joe Karlsson:oh my god, I still can't believe it's real. It like feels like it shouldn't be a real place but it is and I need to go so bad.
Chloe Condon:Have you been to any like Disneyland's or any of the
Joe Karlsson:I get confused world is in Florida. I've been to the universal I do want to go as an adult. I want to get like I'd love to go to like the force the Star Wars one. I think it's at Disney.
Chloe Condon:And then so that one in California it's pretty great. I want to
Joe Karlsson:go so bad and I just watched a YouTube video of some guys at the Harry Potter one at you know So and they like, made the CAC the wants to try to figure out how that one technology works they have to pay 50 bucks for it's like I don't even know what it is but
Chloe Condon:have we talked on the show about the hack I heard about for the Star Wars right have we talked about so obviously it has not happened in the last year or so because Disneyland's been closed but there is a Star Wars ride I've been on it where you are in a What is it a Tie Fighter thing like basically, based on where you sit on this ship, I'm going to get destroyed in the comments here. Either the driver or the shooter or like you have different jobs like you're tasked with and usually when you ride the ride, it's like okay, go this way move to the left and based on your performance as a group and the ride so you better hope you get matched with like some smart people if you're not there with a large family the the response for the ride and the response for like, the people will interact with you through your phone through the app like oh, wow, good job today Jedi based on your performance in the game, but there's a secret thing that if you like do a certain sequence of levers and pulleys and things like that, that instead of it being like to the left, fluke, blah, blah, blah, it'll just be Chewbacca yelling out in parallel the whole time going. With nothing else I will post the link video after this but it's just a panicked Chewbacca so scared. And usually, like it only happens if like people do a specific sequence but that's gonna be
Joe Karlsson:easter egg to just slip into it.
Chloe Condon:There's so many more that we've missed out on from the last you know, of just our 2d to being like, like your the whole thing.
Brandon Minnick:Like the captions just like slow down. You're crazy. Amazing.
Chloe Condon:Have you seen the videos for Super Nintendo World yet y'all?
Joe Karlsson:Yes,
Brandon Minnick:yes.
Joe Karlsson:Yeah, that's really there. It looks incredible. Like just like walking in. It looks like you're in a video game. I don't know.
Brandon Minnick:I love what they did with it. Because it's not just your typical amusement park world. It's it's all interactive. So it's like you're literally in a Mario video game where you can you can jump in hit boxes and get coins. There's like puzzles and stuff that you can try and accomplish along the way. I'm pretty sure they have like a leaderboard and high scores. They just went all out with it. Because when when I first saw it, like, just like a still image of it. It's like Oh, that looks kind of small. I don't really know you'd put there like is it really a Mario? Right?
Chloe Condon:Can I throw a shell at someone's head then I'm not interested.
Brandon Minnick:But the whole world it's like, have you ever wanted to be in a video game? Here you go.
Joe Karlsson:Yeah, so cool. You're gonna do some cool stuff for like phone tech, too.
Chloe Condon:Yeah, I'm so excited to see like, growing up I was just so in awe of animatronics. And now that this stuff is interactive, even just the the what is it the 2d or 3d projection and the Mickey and minis runaway railway blows my mind. I'm just so excited to see the future of theme parks with VR. I've done some VR stuff. That's been really cool. I think we're gonna have some really like imagine like, 20 years from now we're going to be able to skip through eyes. You know, like as a theme park. I can't wait for that. I'm just waiting for interactive, VR experiences of virtual worlds to be a part of ready for the simulation.
Joe Karlsson:We can build that. Build that that's you. That could be you.
Chloe Condon:Let's build the next club.
Brandon Minnick:We were just talking about building the things we want right? That's true.
Chloe Condon:Okay, well,
Brandon Minnick:you heard it here first everybody Didn't
Chloe Condon:we could do like a Godspeed. No, they already did that. way but we never got an answer. What are your faves? What are your faves? Jim writes? Yeah,
Joe Karlsson:I think I don't even know I like yeah, I'm such a coward. Am I really
Chloe Condon:like so you're not a roller coaster? person? You're more like Peter Pan right?
Joe Karlsson:Yeah, like I do like an old old like a crusty old log shoot to go on something the photo I don't want to buy the photo, but I want to see the photo me. And don't just look at
Chloe Condon:it. You want to take a picture with the watermark on it with your phone?
Joe Karlsson:Exactly. I think I think they probably would not love that. But anyways. You gotta be clever. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I don't know. I probably just do like I do something. I don't like water. My water per guy? Probably not. We were just watching classic right we're discussing class action park the documentary on HBO about one of the most deadly.
Chloe Condon:scraped my knee The day after I watched the first half. So I was like, I just seen so much concrete and water. If you've not seen this, y'all, it's great. It's all about this theme park that no longer exists, that it's a miracle that it ever did exist. But I'm Not about dangerous rides. That's
Joe Karlsson:because action Park is my fear for even very safe parks. Yeah, also I would do want to say the scariest thing to like just like county festival you know those like mobile rides that just spin around and make you want to know
Chloe Condon:our coworker April just tweeted about this yesterday there was a tweet going around that said can you believe that our parents
Joe Karlsson:our parents didn't care about us or something like that? Yeah.
Chloe Condon:True I think about going to the state fair as a kid and all these rides that literally would show up as a truck and like trust me I'm like
Joe Karlsson:it doesn't feel right but whenever
Brandon Minnick:you get one of those it was just like in the parking lot down the street kind of pop up fare and yeah, that there was one right operator that just I don't know what they were doing but wasn't paying attention and was supposed to stop the ride after a went around a couple times and just forgot. And don't sleep like there's Yeah, there's people getting off and just throwing up everywhere. Like what happened it's like, oh, yeah, the write up forgot to forgot to stop the ride. Like that's
Joe Karlsson:possible.
Brandon Minnick:Yeah, I was gonna say there's not like a automatic timer, if it's been writing for a couple
Joe Karlsson:days. for four hours straight may want to cool down.
Brandon Minnick:Break I'll be back.
Joe Karlsson:So scary.
Chloe Condon:I have an image up on the screen, Brandon of I spent many an hour in this ride. Just getting stuck against the wall. If you're not familiar with this, right, it just spins really, really fast and plays really, really loud top 40 hits, turned upside down. And I luckily was never on one of these when someone barked, but I can only imagine grabbing.
Joe Karlsson:This is the one so as a kid as a sixth grade, I bought a bunch of tickets. I want to miss three times in a row with my friends. I just remember like stumbling out passing out in the grass and waking up in my own vomit.
Chloe Condon:Remember, to go to theme parks. Those are the days.
Joe Karlsson:That's right. You remember being around people.
Brandon Minnick:Even when you said Mall of America, that was the first thing I thought it was like, Oh, all right now.
Joe Karlsson:People exhaling just the heat the whole building.
Chloe Condon:Joe, where can people find you on the interwebs? Where should they follow you and like, find all your cool, awesome stuff that you're me. Yeah,
Joe Karlsson:yeah. So um, uh, put some links here on the on the channel. Think of access. I'll have you all set post those for me. Absolutely. Yeah, I read it. I'm big into JavaScript node. Front and back end development obviously worked for MongoDB I talked a lot about databases if that's your thing, cool. I also post a lot of like goofy videos. So if you like like, just funny stuff about programming, you should totally hit me up. My Twitter is like, right here, right? But well, I mean, otherwise might end up on tik tok too. I'm gonna plug one more thing with MongoDB I've been writing for the MongoDB dev hub, which we just launched. So if you go to developer dot MongoDB comm it's a great place to learn get resources from doing all my blogging right now. And I'll be also producing some YouTube videos shortly. Fingers crossed in MongoDB. So keep an eye out there too.
Chloe Condon:You work so much work, as they say on 90 day fiance. And doing all kinds of things. And I just want to say thank you for making really great interesting, relevant, fun, engaging, entertaining. Welcome and fresh in my timeline. And I every time I see a tick tock I get excited. me to not even on Tick Tock.
Joe Karlsson:Maybe someday we'll get shot. I just want to say thank you so much, Brandon nikoli for having me on. You guys are amazing. I love the show. I love everything you're doing.
Chloe Condon:We can't wait to give you a big hug and Dollywood. Joe, good to see you in Dollywood. 2035 are so excited.
Joe Karlsson:That may take that long. I love that.
Chloe Condon:All right. Well, maybe next week we'll have a new countdown song, intro and outro that's all on me and my Canva and music capabilities. But until next time, how should we? How should we close this final one without a song out random.
Joe Karlsson:We sing out you Thanks for stopping by.