From Teaching to Tech: Year Four (Aug 2025 to Aug 2026)
It’s hard to believe that I’ve now wrapped up four years as a Developer Advocate at Esri! Every year around my anniversary, I like to look back at everything I experienced over the previous 12 months and reflect on how my role has continued to evolve. As I mentioned in my Year Three article, each year has seemed to develop its own theme. Year One was largely about learning and adjusting to a completely new career, Year Two was about branching outside of the Esri bubble, and Year Three was about expansion and growth through more talks, workshops, conferences, and creative ways of incorporating maps.
Looking back, I think Year Four was less about doing something completely new and more about becoming intentional with everything I had learned over those first three years. I continued speaking at both Esri and third-party conferences, traveled to some incredible places, experimented with new topics, and found more opportunities to connect my background in teaching with web development. I also found myself increasingly interested in topics that were not exclusively GIS-focused, including AI, gamification, React, browser performance, mathematics, and open source. Maps still managed to find their way into many of those topics, of course!
This year also reinforced one of my favorite things about developer relations: there really isn’t just one way to do it. Conference talks are a large part of my role, but so are demos, livestreams, videos, blogs, social content, conversations with developers, and simply experimenting with something new to see what happens. Year Four gave me the opportunity to continue exploring all of those areas while getting a clearer picture of the type of Developer Advocate I want to be.
React Alicante, All Things Open, ReactJS Day, and Øredev
My fourth-year conference season began in October with React Alicante in Alicante, Spain, where I presented Reacting to Surprises: Creating Engaging Hidden Features. This was a particularly fun talk to create because it explored Easter eggs and other unexpected interactions developers can add to web applications. I have always enjoyed finding hidden features in websites and apps, so building an entire presentation around that idea gave me plenty of room to experiment with playful demos.
🎥 Watch my React Alicante talk
React Alicante was especially memorable because I also had the opportunity to lead a React mapping workshop. Workshops are always a very different experience from conference talks because I get to spend more time actually building alongside attendees, answering questions, and helping people work through things as they go. With my background in teaching, that more hands-on format still feels very natural to me, and I loved getting to introduce React developers to mapping in a practical way.
One of my favorite parts of conferences continues to be the people I meet along the way. In Alicante, I met Heather, who was incredibly nice, and we got to spend some time together during the conference. Those unexpected friendships and conversations have become such a meaningful part of conference travel for me, and they are often just as memorable as the talks themselves.
Not long after returning from Spain, I headed to All Things Open in Raleigh, North Carolina, where I presented AI-Powered Gamification for the Web. All Things Open was a completely different kind of trip because I was only there for about 24 hours. It was a very quick turnaround, but I still managed to run into a lot of friends, fellow Developer Relations people, and familiar faces from other conferences. One of the things I really appreciate now that I have been doing conference speaking for a few years is walking into an event and actually knowing people. The developer conference world can feel surprisingly small in the best way.
🎥 Watch my All Things Open talk
And there was not much time to recover afterward. Almost immediately after that 24-hour trip to Raleigh, I was traveling again, this time to Italy for ReactJS Day in Verona.
At ReactJS Day, I presented React and the Art of Gamification. Gamification has become one of my favorite topics because it combines so many things I enjoy: frontend development, user experience, psychology, creativity, and teaching. It also gives me an excuse to create playful demos, which is always a plus. Presenting the talk at a React-focused conference allowed me to spend more time on the React-specific implementation details while still discussing the broader ideas behind why gamification works.
🎥 Watch my ReactJS Day talk
Finally, in November, I traveled to Malmö, Sweden for Øredev, where I presented A Developer’s Guide to Open Source Web Mapping Libraries. This has been one of my longest-running talks, but I continue to enjoy presenting it because the open source mapping landscape keeps evolving. I introduced developers to libraries such as Leaflet and MapLibre GL JS while also covering some of the basic geospatial concepts developers need to start working with maps on the web.
🎥 Watch my Øredev talk
One of my favorite things about giving an open source mapping talk at a general developer conference is seeing how many attendees have little or no previous GIS experience. I came into Esri without a traditional GIS background myself, so I still remember what it feels like to discover just how much can be done with location technology. Being able to introduce another developer to those possibilities continues to be incredibly rewarding.
By the end of that stretch, I had traveled from Spain to North Carolina to Italy and then Sweden in just five weeks. It was busy, occasionally exhausting, and a very fitting way to start Year Four. More importantly, each conference gave me something different: a workshop, a new friendship, reunions with people I already knew, new audiences, and a chance to keep experimenting with the kinds of topics I most enjoy teaching.
Esri FedGIS and Developer & Technology Summit
After a break from conference travel during the winter, I kicked off my 2026 conference season with the Esri Federal GIS Conference in Washington, D.C. in February. FedGIS is always one of my easiest conferences logistically since I live right outside the city, and it is also a great chance to reconnect with coworkers and developers from across the federal GIS community.
Esri conferences are obviously a very different experience from the third-party developer conferences I attend throughout the year. The developers I meet at these events are often already using ArcGIS and come with specific questions, projects, or challenges they are trying to solve. Those conversations give me a much closer look at what developers are actually building and where they need additional examples, documentation, demos, or guidance.
March brought the Esri Developer & Technology Summit in Palm Springs, which continues to be one of the biggest events of the year for my team. I participated in several developer-focused activities throughout the week, including co-presenting a session on Git and GitHub basics. I especially enjoyed that session because it allowed me to return to something very familiar from my teaching background: helping people build confidence with a technical topic that can initially feel intimidating.
I also spent plenty of time in the Tech Zone talking directly with developers. When I think back to my first Esri conferences four years ago, I remember being nervous that someone would ask me a question I didn’t know how to answer. I’ve learned since then that someone absolutely will ask a question I don’t know how to answer, and that is completely normal. ArcGIS is enormous, and no single person can know everything about it. What matters is being able to listen, understand what someone is trying to accomplish, help where I can, and connect them with the right people and resources when I can’t.
That change in mindset is probably one of the clearest ways I can see my own growth over these four years.
FrontRunners AI and Data Conference
Later in March, I got to stay close to home again for the FrontRunners AI and Data Conference in Arlington, Virginia. After all of the flights involved in conference speaking, being able to simply take the Metro to an event is always appreciated!
I presented AI-Powered Gamification for the Web, which fit especially well with this year’s AI-focused conference theme. I’ve presented at FrontRunners before, so it was nice to return to a familiar local developer community with a completely different topic. The conference also gave me an opportunity to hear how other developers are approaching AI and data, which is particularly useful considering how quickly both the technology and the conversations surrounding it continue to change.
AI has been one of the areas I’ve experimented with most throughout my time as a Developer Advocate. What interests me most, though, is not simply adding an AI feature because AI is popular. I enjoy figuring out where it can actually make a web experience more useful, interesting, or interactive. Combining it with things like maps and gamification has given me plenty of opportunities to explore that.
JS Tek, CascadiaJS, and NDC Copenhagen
May and June brought another busy conference stretch, starting with JS Tek in the Chicago area. I gave two talks there, Equation to Animation: Crafting Dynamic Math Visuals on the Web and React and the Art of Gamification. These two sessions represented two very different parts of my background, but both gave me an opportunity to build visual and interactive demos while connecting the concepts to web development.
Equation to Animation is especially meaningful to me because it brings mathematics back into my work. After teaching math for ten years, I never expected it to become a conference talk topic in my new career. Creating visual math examples with JavaScript has been a fun reminder that changing careers did not mean leaving everything from my previous one behind. Instead, I’ve been able to reuse that experience in ways I never would have predicted when I first left the classroom.
A couple of weeks later, I headed west for CascadiaJS in Seattle, where I presented Keep the Main Thread Free With Web Workers. This talk pushed me into another area of frontend development I wanted to explore more deeply: browser performance. I demonstrated how expensive work on the main thread can make an application feel unresponsive and how Web Workers can move some of that work elsewhere while keeping the user interface smooth.
🎥 Watch my CascadiaJS talk
This was one of my favorite new talks to build because it gave me the chance to focus on a core JavaScript and browser topic instead of starting with maps or GIS. At the same time, I was still able to incorporate mapping data into some of the examples. Apparently, I have now reached the point where maps can sneak into almost anything I present.
Immediately after Seattle, I traveled to Denmark for NDC Copenhagen, where I presented AI-Powered Gamification for the Web. NDC was another conference I was incredibly excited to attend because of its variety of technical topics and international developer audience. Presenting in Copenhagen also continued what has become one of the more unexpected parts of my career: getting to travel internationally while teaching developers.
🎥 Watch my NDC Copenhagen talk
This stretch from Chicago to Seattle to Copenhagen was exhausting, but it was also a great representation of how varied my conference work has become. Within just a few weeks, I was speaking about mathematics, React, browser performance, AI, and gamification. A few years ago, I might have worried that those topics were too different from one another. Now, I think that variety is part of what makes the work interesting.
Esri User Conference
In July, it was time to head back to San Diego for the Esri User Conference. UC is always difficult to describe to someone who has never attended because of its sheer size. Between the technical sessions, Expo, map gallery, special interest groups, networking events, and thousands of attendees, there is constantly something happening.
This year, I co-presented ArcGIS Location Platform: What Is It and Who Is It For?, where I shared demos involving ArcGIS basemaps, static maps, and MCP for ArcGIS Location Services. I particularly enjoyed this session because the question in the title is one I think about often in my work. There are many developers who could benefit from location services without necessarily thinking of themselves as GIS developers, and helping make those capabilities approachable to broader developer audiences continues to be an important part of my role.
I also spent time in the Developer Technology area of the Expo talking with developers about ArcGIS Location Services and other developer tools. These conversations are still one of the most useful parts of UC for me. I can create talks, blogs, videos, samples, and social posts throughout the year, but having someone stand in front of me and explain exactly what they are trying to build provides a completely different type of insight.
After four years, UC also gives me a nice way to measure how much more comfortable I have become in the ArcGIS ecosystem. I still learn something new every time I attend, but I no longer feel like the brand-new person trying to absorb everything at once. Instead, I can spend more time focusing on the conversations themselves, sharing what I know, and learning from the developers and colleagues around me.
Beyond Conferences
Of course, conferences were only part of Year Four. Between all of the travel, I continued working on livestreams, developer demos, videos, and social media. I’ve also been experimenting more with short-form educational content and finding ways to teach one useful concept without always requiring a full conference presentation or long-form tutorial.
I’ve found this especially interesting because it connects directly back to my teaching experience. Different concepts need different teaching formats. Sometimes a developer needs a detailed technical article. Sometimes they need a complete code sample. Sometimes they need a 45-minute talk that provides the bigger picture, and sometimes a one-minute video showing a single feature is enough to spark an idea.
I’ve also continued experimenting with the overlap between ArcGIS and the broader web development ecosystem. I enjoy showing how ArcGIS can work alongside open source libraries and familiar frontend tools rather than treating mapping as an entirely separate world. Over the past four years, I’ve learned that some of my favorite developer conversations happen when someone who has never thought much about GIS suddenly realizes that location could solve a problem or be a great addition in their own application.
Maps have continued to be a fun creative outlet for me as well. Whether I am building a technical demo, experimenting with AI, working on a gamified application, or creating something simply because an idea sounds fun, I almost always find a reason to put a map somewhere.
Wrapping Up Year Four
Looking back, I don’t think Year Four was about trying to do more than Year Three. If anything, this year was about becoming more confident in what I enjoy doing and where I want to continue growing. I still love presenting at conferences, but I’ve become increasingly interested in creating talks that begin with a broader web development idea and then finding interesting ways to connect location technology when it makes sense.
I’ve also realized that my interests do not need to fit perfectly into one box. I can talk about maps, React, AI, browser APIs, mathematics, performance, open source, gamification, and teaching because those topics are all connected through the way I approach developer advocacy. I enjoy taking something technical, finding a visual or interactive way to explain it, and hopefully giving another developer an idea they can take back to their own projects.
My teaching background continues to influence nearly everything I do. I spent ten years thinking about how to explain difficult concepts, how to keep people engaged, how to structure lessons, and how to recognize when someone needs a different explanation. Four years into developer relations, I’m still using those skills constantly. My classroom just happens to look a lot different now.
Year One taught me how to be a Developer Advocate. Year Two gave me the confidence to expand outside of Esri. Year Three pushed me to grow through more conferences, workshops, and new formats. Year Four has helped me become more intentional about the topics I want to explore and the kind of Developer Advocate I want to continue becoming.
I have no idea exactly what Year Five will look like, but I already have plenty of ideas, talks, workshops, and experiments I want to try. If the first four years are any indication, there will probably be a lot of JavaScript, plenty of teaching, a few flights, and more maps than I can count.
Here’s to Year Five! 🎉🗺️
This article was written by Courtney Yatteau, a Developer Advocate at Esri. The opinions expressed in this article are solely Courtney’s and do not necessarily represent the views, strategies, or opinions of her employer. If you have any feedback, please feel free to like and/or comment. Additionally, if you have any questions or comments that you’d prefer to send privately, you can contact Courtney through LinkedIn, X, or Bluesky. If you’re considering a career switch, looking to get into tech, or curious about what it’s like to work at Esri, then please stay tuned for future posts! You can also check out Esri’s careers page or this video for more information.
Top comments (0)