DEV Community: Facundo Corradini

The Amazing Experience of Speaking at Online Events

Facundo Corradini — Wed, 21 Jul 2021 03:07:43 +0000

In my previous article I shared the joy of finally having some of my talks selected for conferences, one of my goals for the current (and the past) year.

But being online instead of in-person, this was a particularly challenging experience. Here's what I learned speaking at some of the world's best frontend conferences

Live coding at an online conference: the skydiving experience

I had everything set up for a traditional, slides-driven approach for my CSS Conf Co talk.. and then I had the brilliant idea of switching to a no-slides, live-coding one.

And I mean it. Just one week before the event, I decided to ditch the slides and just use CodePen instead, live coding the seven CSS tricks for that talk.

That proved to be one of the best, worst ideas I've ever had. It transformed an already thrilling event into skydiving experience.

If you ever went skydiving, you know exactly what I'm talking about: you always wanted to do it, so one day you get the reservation, go to the airfield, set yourself up, board the plane... your excitement growing with every step... But the precise instant before jumping, you regret every decision in your life that got you there. But hey, you decide to jump anyway, and the moment that you touch the ground, you want to do it again.

Well, live coding the whole lightning talk was exactly like that. Increased excitement, a moment of why the hell did I got myself into this?, a thrilling ride, and the realisation that I can't wait to do it all again

Sure thing, I forgot some of the things I wanted to say. I got a rough start with weird phrasing as the adrenaline was over nine thousand. Still, 6 out of the 7 examples went without any issue, while the other failed due to a typo.. that I saved with plan b: commented, working code that I had at previously setup just off-screen.

Funny enough, adrenaline totally messes up your perception of time. When I got stuck on that typo I felt like it was at least two minutes of people looking at my confused face. Re-watching the recording, turned out it was under 10 seconds.

A thrilling experience that I can't wait to repeat, and would recommend to anyone. Just don't change your approach one week before the event.

Pre-recording can be great... if you don't overdo it

Web Directions' approach to online events was completely different: they set three runtimes for different time zones, so people in the Pacific, Europe, and the Americas can all watch it at decent hours. This obviously meant that the talks were pre-recorded, which gives us the opportunity to make it perfect. But if you have any experience with anything in life, you'd know that perfect is the enemy of... done.

That didn't stopped me from trying. I felt that with all the help they provided (including a great camera, lights, mic... a professional setup) I owned nothing short of perfection.

And it was a struggle. I put an absurd level of effort on my pronunciation, which meant three days of recording sessions. In the last one, I decided to split the talk in eight separate blocks, so I can repeat just that part if anything was sub-par.
But that wasn't enough. Some parts took 8 or 9 takes. Still, the editor was able to work some magic and edit it all together, for a definitely not-perfect, great talk, if I can say so myself.

Anyway, the lesson here is... don't obsess over hiding your accent if you (as I) are not a native English speaker. It's much easier and more enjoyable if you just let yourself flow. That's definitely my plan for the next one.

Non-live doesn't mean no audience interaction

One aspect that I loved about my experience at Web Directions was the audience interaction in the chat. My talk greatly relied on it, with the more impactful bits pretty much depending on a "raise your hands" moment... so I took a gamble and decided to incentivize audience interaction anyway. I did it in the recording, but also in the live chat during the three broadcast of the event.

And the results were amazing. When speaking at live, in-person events, I (as almost all speakers) greatly rely on audience interaction. Even if your talk doesn't have deliberately interactive moments, there are cues that tell you when you're connecting with the audience, from applause and burst of laughter (hopefully when you're trying to make a joke), to that connection of looking at random attendees in the eyes for a brief moment.

You obviously don't have that at pre-recorded events, so you can't adjust in the moment as you hopefully would live, but people are still there to support you. They interact more freely when you ask for it (instead of counting raised hands, you get deeper, longer and more personalized answers), they still provide confirmation when you're reaching them with short messages and emoticons, they take notes and tweet about it. And they're super welcoming and make sure to thank you and join the virtual applause at the end.

Here's some of the feedback I gathered throughout the talk:

Incredibly heartwarming comments from the attendees, including some of the people I admire the most and who inspired me to write this talk in the first place.. there are no words to describe how great this makes me feel

The conference experience doesn't get limited to the talks

I still got to meet and work with awesome people, even some that I've admired for years, grow my network, and share with the community.

The live nature of the CSS Conf talk meant I couldn't pay the tinniest bit of attention to the live chat (otherwise, I would have resolved that typo sooner, as people were already pointing it out), but we got an amazing after-party in a virtual conference room via gather.town, where we got to meet the attendees and sponsors, play games, share stories... all that good stuff you'd expect from in-person conferences.

And the best part, the day before the event we got a lunch / dinner ('cause Americas / Europe time zones) where we got to meet the other speakers and organizers, some of which have become great friends since.

Moving Forward

I thoroughly enjoyed every last bit about speaking at online events so far, an I'm thrilled to announce I'm already selected for a couple more. Hopefully one of them is gonna be in-person, if the situation with COVID allows for.

But if there's something to learn from this experience (and this post), is that online conferences are equally valid and enjoyable. Just like with remote work, I believe some of these conferences are keeping the online or hybrid format, and that's a good thing. It reduces the cost for everyone without affecting the value, broadens the geographical reach, and makes it easier to assemble a diverse lineup (something both CSSConfCo as Web Directions' Hover stood out for)

So make ready and consider sending your proposals for online conferences too. I'd recommend them 100%!

I'll be speaking at amazing conferences, and so can you!

Facundo Corradini — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 15:31:48 +0000

In my previous post I told you how COVID pretty much destroyed all of my 2020 goals, and how I had exactly the same goals for 2021. One of the bigger ones was speaking at an international conference, so I set my sights there.

Throughout 15 years in the industry I had never dared to speak at a conference, but lately I felt like I had some interesting perspectives to share, and that I could give back to the community by teaching a bit of what I learned from it, which is pretty much everything I know about web dev, as I'm mostly "self taught" (quite a misleading term, as most things I know I took from other great teachers)

I had 5 talks in mind, all of them halfway written, and I've sent dozens of proposals to various conferences, with most of them being rejected and the few accepted last year being cancelled due to COVID.

Funny enough, I dared to send 4 proposals to this year's Web Directions Hover, one of the most amazing conferences about CSS. I really, really wanted to be there. So imagine my surprise when the mail finally came in.

It was about 9PM local time in Argentina (a much more decent time in Australia, where the conference organizers are), and I was almost asleep as I had had a really long day, including a 20Km (12.5 miles) walk and an hypocaloric diet in my effort to get rid of all those additional Kgs that lockdown has left me with.

The title simply read "Your recent Hover CSS conference proposal". Or something like that, I didn't had my glasses on, so reading the mobile screen was not easy. "uh, yet another generic rejection mail", I though. But this wasn't a rejection mail. Amongst other things, it read "We'd be really interested in having you deliver "Neurodiversity (and why you hate CSS)"", which was definitely the one talk I really, really wanted to deliver.

So I jumped out of bed, ran to the PC and double checked. I was living a dream. That's when I read the sender and it said John Allsopp, the conference organizer and an outstanding dev that really marked the early days of my career. Receiving his praise for all the submissions and having him select the one I held closest to my heart was unbelievable. But it was real.

I tried to play it cool and professional as I confirmed the talk and sent some emails back and forth. I promised myself I'd try not to fanboy too hard as I saw the speakers I'd be "sharing the stage" with. But seriously, OMG, I'll be sharing the stage with the likes of Rachel Andrew, Miriam Suzanne and Heydon Pickering, as well as upcoming stars (and pretty much friends) such as Ahmad Shadeed. Really. Look. That's my face right next to Miriam!!

In the following weeks, news only kept getting better. I was confirmed to speak at CSS Conf Colombia, an event I was looking forward to ever since it was announced two years back, presenting my talk "CSS Mythical Creatures and how to get them". I also got invited to speak at TechFairLive, presenting "Modern CSS Solutions to classic CSS problems", and while my submission for Figma's Clarity conf got rejected, an exchange of follow-up mails got my talk "Accessibility for the Invisible" scheduled for their livestreams instead.

Anyway, I'm speaking about myself too much, but this post is not really about me. It's about you. I've been wanting to speak at a conference for far too long and it took me a long, long time to dare. But I'm sure everyone has something interesting to say, so if you're in the same situation, I'm here to tell you: Go for it! You got this!

Here's my best advice on how to land some speaking opportunities:

Start with your local community

While some conferences explicitly welcome first-timers, most organizers will ask for a video of your previous talks to check your abilities as a speaker.

The good thing about it is that said video doesn't have to be from a big conference. A simple recording from a local meetup will do. So if you have literally zero experience, that's a great place to start. Whatever tech you're passionate about, I can guarantee there is some local / online meetup that will take you in as a speaker, and that's a great first step, as you'd probably find it far easier to speak in front of 20 coworkers than doing so with a big audience.

So start small, then aim for the sky.

Turn your radar on

There are two main ways to get speaking opportunities. Most conferences will run a Call for Proposals (CFP) months in advance to scout for speakers and talk ideas. This is your opportunity to sell your talk.

Luckily there are services such as SeeCFP and CFPLand that will alert of (most) open CFPs for your keywords.

Sometimes the CFPs alerts are handled by the CFP platforms themselves, such as Sessionize and PaperCall

If you're interested in speaking at conferences, you'll probably need to use one of those systems, so I'd suggest signing up to all of the above and taking the time to customize the keywords and preferences.

Pay attention to the conference requirements and their style, and write a killer sell

Once you find a CFP that fits your target audience, take a moment to really understand what the organizers are looking for. They'd normally list their topics, tracks, or preferences. Some prefer strictly technical stuff, some would probably look for personal stories.
Maybe you can adapt your talk to better suit the conference. Maybe you have a couple different ideas in mind, feel free to send any that fits the target audience.

Most conferences will ask you to sell your talk in 2 paragraphs, which can be hard to do. After all, we have 25-30 minutes in our head, yet we have to summarize it in just a few seconds of reading for the organizer to evaluate.

A nice formula I like to follow is one line each of what's the problem we're trying to solve, how we fix it, and how that makes our lives easier. But really, I only have a base script for each talk sell, which I personalize for each conference, and I think that's the better way to go.

Writing a killer "elevator pitch" will greatly increase your chances of being selected. Oh, and watch your grammar there, the organizers are sorting through hundreds of proposals which is a lot of work, so take your time to show some effort and respect.

Networking is key

The other way to get speaking opportunities, and what usually makes 50 - 75% of the final lineups, is getting an invitation from the organizers themselves. Obviously this won't do for your breakthrough talk, but it doesn't require you to be a "big name" in the speaking world either. Conference organizers are also conference attendees, so if your talk is great and you engage in networking in a true, human way, you're likely to leave the conference with an invitation for your next.

You can probably land some invitations from your regular, daily networking at whatever social networks you run, from the community, and from your company. So if you're interested in speaking, dare and add the "speaker" title to your LinkedIn / Twitter bio.

Stay Organized

Having so many leads, proposals and different submission platforms can get messy in a hurry, so make sure to stay organized. Add your speaking commitments to your calendar, and make sure to have a table to help you stay organized with your submissions.

Some fields I'd recommend:

Conference Name, which I normally link to their website.
Talk Name, specially if you have multiple submissions to the same CFP.
Date CFP closes.
Conference date.
Location: Online / country.
Platform: whether it was a direct message lead, Sessionize, Papercall, Google Forms or any other type.
Perks: Some conferences will pay their speakers, cover their travel and hotel, some will send you cool stuff, some will help you get ahold of a better camera or microphone, etc.
Status and lastmod: I use this field to keep track of how far into the process we are. I start from "not sent yet", to "pending", to "confirmed / rejected". I like to color-code the row as well and keep the confirmed at the top, then the pending, unsent, and finally the rejected. Speaking of which...

Don't be discouraged by rejections

Everyone has something interesting to say, but a conference can only fit a certain number of speakers. Most conferences receive a gazillion proposals they have to filter through to find just a handful that better suits them. And I mean it. It's fairly common to see 400 - 800 submissions for a conference that can only fit 10 talks at most. So yeah, chances of your talk being rejected are far greater than those of being accepted.

It can be hard to deal with so many automated rejection emails and the red rows in your table piling up, but always keep in mind that all speakers go through the same. Keep insisting, try to build the bridges with networking, maybe have a friend or two check your sell. I had 20+ CFP rejections (usually submit 2 to 4 talks to each conference) before landing my first one, and as far as I can tell, I've been lucky compared to others.

Always follow up!

Most organizers will send you an email with the result of your proposal. But even if you get a rejection, be nice and reply. Thank them for their time, show interest on the conference, ask for some feedback to improve your proposal, etc. Yup, replying to what's obviously an automated, bulk mail can feel weird, but there's people on the other side that are working really hard.

Most of your replies will probably never be read, but I've had organizers coming back to me months later (after the conference ended) to provide much appreciated feedback, and as I mentioned before, even had one rejected talk turned into a livestream.

Seriously, go for it!

I sincerely believe everyone has something interesting to share, but most of us simply don't dare. My friend Matias was in the same position as me, so I encouraged him insistently over months, helped him improve his proposals, sent him every relevant CFP I saw, and insisted with the Palpatine's Dew It meme pretty much daily. He's now scheduled to speak at TechFair and ReactJS case study festival, news that I received with such a joy as if I was being selected myself.

I'm sure many of the awesome devs in this amazing community may be playing around with the idea, so I hope you find these tips useful and finally dare to send your proposals! Let me know if I can help in any way!

Oh, and since we've been talking networking, feel free to follow me at my twitter, and of course it's needless to say I'd love to see you at any of my talks. Some are free, some are paid but well worth it. Web Directions Hover even adjust the price to your country's salaries, and you can use coupon code facundosentme for 20% off ;) I promise, I really, really have some mind-blowing stuff to say there, and the lineup is out of this world! See you there!

Why I don't use Stack Overflow

Facundo Corradini — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 01:40:39 +0000

Google any question you ever have about programming and the first results will probably be from Stack Overflow, with great answers from outstanding developers inside. Thousands if not millions of devs use it every day to get unstuck and fix that weird bug, which makes it an invaluable resource that most devs wouldn't even imagine how to live without.

But if you ever dare to ask or answer a question, you'll find yourself engaged in an unbelievably toxic environment wondering how such a monster could have ever grown so massive.

Here's my assessment of why this happens, what they could do to fix it, why I believe we shouldn't just go along with it, and what alternatives we could use instead.

It prioritizes search engines over user experience

It's fairly clear that the dominant position in Google's search results is a key to their success, which can be frustrating as you'd usually get old results that perpetuate bad or deprecated practices. But that's just a quality issue, the real problem is the behavioural ones they create in order to get there.

For instance, duplicate content was one of the big no-nos of early search engine optimization. Stack Overflow therefore puts a giant effort on avoiding duplicate questions, with a built-in search that suggest duplicates as soon as you start writing your question (which is great) and incentives their users to mark questions as duplicates (which is not).

At this point, any new user that dares to make a question bellow the level that'd make the language creator go "uh, guess we should spend the entire next month looking at that" will face a wave of duplicate question flags, low-quality marks, and downvotes, which will ironically get the account below the minimal score required for posting questions and result in it getting functionally blocked. Forever.

Let's think about that for a sec. You, as a newbie, ask a question that seems reasonable to you. Instead of getting answers, you get functionally blocked from using the website until you gain score, which you can only do by answering questions, which you don't have the knowledge to.

Doesn't that seem like a vicious circle?

Furthermore, if you are a stablished developer and decide to give back to the community by trying to answer some questions at SO, you won't fare any easier. Dare to answer what other considers a low-quality question and you'll get downvotes. Dare to answer a great-quality question with a great-quality answer and you'll... still get downvotes, because...

Its all about being the dominant elite

People with a bazillion points will gladly get a -1 from downvoting someone else's answer just to improve the chances of their own's from being marked as the accepted one. Really. There are people out there downvoting every other answer they deem as a threat to their dominant position in the ridiculous hierarchy of meaningless score.

They'll downvote, flag, name-call, and reply in the most condescending ways. They'll abuse you out in every possible way just to keep being in the top 1% overall, to gain reputation score for the next privilege (yup, that's their term) or to claim their next badge, many of which are awarded from being a toxic %#$&!

There are badges for reaching a number of raised flags (which results in people flagging everything), for reaching a number of edits (which results in people editing everything), for deleting your own post with negative score (and that's literally called peer pressure... seriously, I couldn't make this up) and for visiting the site without skipping a single day. Ever. Which leads me to...

It relies on addictive behaviour

The rewards system is incredibly fine tuned to keep users engaged, and seems designed by an evil psychologist or a master game designer (is there any difference between both? :p)

If you make it past the initial backlash of negativity and toxic behaviour, you'll find yourself bombarded by small dopamine rushes from raising scores and badges acquisition every time you answer a question or reach a milestone.

The issue is that it goes way too far, with each tag having three or four people literally addicted to it. I'm talking about well-intended, incredibly knowledgeable people that spend every waking hour overwatching a tag, racing to be the first to answer every new question and have their dose of +10s to survive the day.

They've developed strategies for it too: normally they'll answer the question in the shortest possible way to be the very first and get their question marked as accepted in case the author was watching, then immediately edit it for clarity in case that they were looking for a better one, and finally another edit formatting it to be the prettier and get attention whether is was the one marked as accepted or not.

These people are pretty much creating 99% of SO's content. They are working their souls off for the company, without receiving any real compensation, and spending so much of their time on the site that they probably can't even hold an actual job, despite being outstanding devs. And don't even get me started on how they treat their (also unpaid) moderators...

How could they fix it

I'm not one to make complaints without pitching a solution, so hear me out... the issues behind SO's toxicity shouldn't be too hard to be worked on.

Removing downvoting for good. Really, there's no benefit for it. If you think something shouldn't be on the site, flag it as such. But downvoting is hurtful. Our minds tend to weigh a negative feedback far heavier than a bunch of positive ones. Even if the downvote means -2 score and the upvote +10, most people will perceive an overall negative experience from getting one or two downs in a sea of ups. And that sucks.
Putting a limit on the number of daily answers per user. This will prevent addictive behaviour and give upcoming devs a chance to compete with the ones dominating a topic. And I mean compete in the most loose of meanings, as it will also lessen the hierarchical aspect.
Reworking the way questions from new users are handled. Seriously, it seems absurd that trying to ask a sincere question unequivocally results in your account being practically banned. Make a sandbox for new users, improve your duplicate question search system, separate the spam from the well intended newbies.
Remove policing incentives. Flagging a question should be a last resort, not an encouraged behaviour.

I've seen them speak a lot about trying to fix the toxicity in the recent years, with a new code of conduct every other month and positive articles everywhere, but no changes to the system itself.

Either they're unaware of their system being the issue, or knowingly taking advantage of it while putting down some nice words to wash their guilt away. Considering how masterful their psychological tricks are, I have a hard time believing it's the former. Therefore...

We shouldn't just go along with it

Yup, it's comfortable to pick the first result at Google, and that's usually Stack Overflow. But by doing so, we're enabling and contributing to this behaviour.

That's why I choose not to use Stack Overflow, and why I believe it would be better for everyone, even themselves, if more people did the same.

Not only have I stopped answering questions there, I do my best to avoid getting any trafic into the site. I deliberately avoid clicking in their search results (and I use DuckDuckGo that luckily doesn't seem to be so addicted to SO as Google to begin with), which usually makes for better solutions anyway, cause...

It's probably holding you back as a developer

Sure, there's a place and a time for simple questions / answers. SO-driven development is a term we like to joke about. It's a quick solution that will get you unstuck. But there are better alternatives that will rocket your carrer forward:

Ask in a more productive, welcoming online community such as DEV.to. The very nature of DEV's system incentives good behaviour, but they really make an effort to get it to the next level, and it shows. Everywhere I look, there's a little detail helping to build a positive community.
But there are all sorts of tools for questions out there. GitHub issues themselves can be a great place to learn (sure, some projects are not as welcoming as others, but GitHub at least has a guide to build a good CoC). Even Twitter has less toxicity than SO, and that's saying something.
Try browsing through the documentation. It can be more troublesome or even frustrating at times, but it'll help you truly understand the language / tool. It will give you super powers.
Reach out to your local communities. They'll be glad to assist and will help you build the connections, which at the end of the day is the best way to get great job opportunities, participate in meetups, even start your path as a speaker or author.

As you can see, going with alternatives will not only help you fix that particular bug or guide you through a how-to process, it will do so in a much more positive vibe and help you boost your career with knowledge and connections you wouldn't get otherwise.

And if you're in a position to share knowledge and answer questions, please don't do it on SO. A personal blog, DEV, twitter, anything else is a better platform. Which reminds me, I regularly blog about web development, mostly CSS stuff, and share the links at my twitter, so you can follow me if those topics are of your interest ;)

Let’s build a better web together!

2020 was meant to be the best year of my life. It almost killed me instead.

Facundo Corradini — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 11:41:31 +0000

I have the habit of making new-year resolutions and setting goals for the year to come, so back in January 1st I published what I considered an ambitious list of professional goals:

Speak at an international conference
Join a new team
Publish a remarkable article a month.
Write my first book

I thought all the hard work I've done during 2019 (and the previous 15 years) may give me some sort of a head start, but never really expected to reach them so fast.

By March I was confirmed to speak at 3 conferences, in 2 languages, about 3 very different topics. Yes, I wrote 5 talks in a month and sent over 30 proposals to various CFPs, but still was surprised by how well they were being accepted.

I was invited to join amazing dev teams in top-tier companies, so it was really up to me to choose the best fit and join in as soon as I finished the running projects and commitments.

As for publication rate, I was clearly overreaching my goals, doing 2 or 3 posts a month at some of the most distinguished blogs and communities, while my book, "CSS the right way", was taking shape at a fast and steady pace.

I don't speak too much about my personal life on the internet, but I was proud to be in my best shape in more than a decade, got a healthy routine in place which skyrocketed my productivity, and finally dared to take those dancing lessons I had been deferring since forever. Furthermore, my brother had just told me they were expecting a new baby, and nothing could make me happier than that.

Then the pandemic struck. All conferences got cancelled. Companies struggled to shift their whole teams to 100% remote, which meant they wouldn't be taking in new devs for some time. The dance studio closed, and so did the paddle court, the airsoft fields, and everything else I relied on to get off my comfy dev chair and keep my mental health in check. Lockdown meant I wouldn't even be able to keep my running routine, and I'm not much of an indoor workout guy.

All the letdown hit me really hard, and got me quite anxious, failing to deliver on secondary commitments such as blogging.
Yet I knew I was part of a very small privileged group. Everyone else was going through the same struggles as me, while adapting to remote working, something I had extensive experience with. I had a job that allowed me to stay at home, safe from harm's way, pretty much indefinitely. And I did. For months on end I only got outside for groceries and such. I wasn't in any of the risk groups, but I took as my responsibility to keep those around me safe too.

Then the pandemic struck... me. I went to my brother's to help him with renovations to better setup the house for the upcoming newborn, with such a bad luck that his wife had been exposed to the virus two days before. She wasn't showing symptoms yet, but she passed the virus to me, my brother, and my parents.

A weird thing about COVID is that, while there are clear risk factors, you can't really predict how it'll hit you. We were worried about my father, but all he got was an irritated throat and a single night of fever.
The rest of us got through a more complicated process. Fever for weeks on, loss of smell and taste, a stomach flu, skin rash, shivers, a never-ending cough, a ridiculous fatigue and shortness of breath, and strong pains that came and went as the fever developed.

But the worst part was yet to come. I developed difficulty to breathe, which got me admitted to the hospital. I'll save you the details, but suffice to say it took me a long, long time to recover, and only this week I'm getting back to my normal lung capacity.

COVID took a toll on my body, but also on my mental health. I wasn't able to code, write... hell, I even failed to communicate the situation properly to some of my publishers, something I'm really ashamed for. Yet I'm strangely happy that it was me and not my father, or my sister-in-law (and my nephew) that got the worst part.

But I'm back, and that's what this post is really about. It's been a really hard year for all of us, and we're not in the clear yet. My resolutions and goals for 2021 are the very same as they were for 2020, but I came to accept that there's no shame in that. Maybe you feel that you didn't do much progress either, and I'm here to tell you: that's OK. It's been hard times, and now that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel at last, it's time to regroup and get back to building awesome things together.

Just yesterday I was talking to a dev friend. Unbelievably talented guy, head of front end at a great company, that has been playing around with the idea of speaking at conferences but never dared. So I encouraged him, helped him "sell" the talk, and got him to send his first CFP.

At the same time I got back to my social media and was surprised to see people thanking me for things I wrote a long time ago, claiming it helped them better understand a concept and even inspired them to build awesome things that I wouldn't even believe to be possible. And that's what's all about. Help each other, specially through tough times.

So I'll end this year just like it started: writing articles, finishing my book, sending proposals to all the CFPs I can find, building the bridges to join a great team, mentoring newcomers. If I can help you in any way, you can find me at my twitter. Let's build a better web together!