Aileen Villanueva:

So I think this is why we do it, because you never know who might need these kind of demands to know what they want to do, you know, because they love it.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

You're listening to the Everyday Heroes podcast brought to you by HeroDevs. Welcome to Everyday Heroes, a podcast, nay, a show, nay, an optical and auditory experience about the unsung heroes of the tech world. From the phone in your pocket to the world's most critical digital infrastructure. Open source software has a hand in it. These free technologies that shape our digital world wouldn't be anything without the heroes that maintain them, promote them, and evolve them. These are their stories. I'm your host, Hayden Baillio, and I'm here with my co host, Wendy Hurst. Wendy, what's on your mind?

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Honestly, today on my mind is languages. I've been studying Spanish for, I don't know, casually a couple of years, but the other day I reached a 365day in a row milestone on duolingo of studying Spanish.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Very cool.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

That's exciting.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Congratulations.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Yeah, I can. I can read it pretty well and I can pronounce it okay, but I'm just not very good at speaking it because duolingo, that's not what duolingo is designed to do. I imagine it's the same way for, like, coding languages. Right? You can read it, but imagine if you could just, like, speak in code, it wouldn't make any sense.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah, it's like. It's like you can, you know, what a bracket does, but it doesn't mean that you can, like, code something. Right. So it's like learning the vocabulary versus being conversational. Yeah, but, you know, we were in Spain and you did very well, so it's not like you're not that far away from conversational and from what I know about languages, right. It's like 2,000 words really makes up the majority of conversational. Like, language. Right.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

It's like 2,000 words gets you 90% there, and then the other 10% is like the other 10,000 words that you're like.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

It's true.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Why do I need to know what aluminum is in Spanish? Right? I don't know, but maybe I do for once. Aluminum. All right, all right, that's enough. That's enough host talk. Wendy, I have a really. We have a special guest. Very thrilled to introduce today's guest, absolute force in the tech world who's shaping the future of web development and AI based in Monterrey, Mexico. She's a Senior engineer with over a decade of experience creating innovative web solutions across industries like education, health, cannabis, finance, and energy.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

But her passion for tech doesn't stop there. Our guest is also a woman tech maker ambassador dedicated to fostering diversity in tech and making complex concepts like machine learning accessible to everyone. Whether through her speaking engagements, open source projects, or mentorship, she's empowering developers to bridge the gap between AI and web development. And without any further ado, I will try to pronounce her name. And without any further ado, I will try to pronounce her name. Please join me in welcoming the incredible Aileen Vijane. Vija nueva. So excited to have you.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I'm so sorry I butchered it, but you know what? I'm gonna leave that in because I'm human. Okay. All right, Aileen, thank you so much.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

You did great.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Thank you so much for. Thank you.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Thank you. Thank you, both of you for having me.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Absolutely. We start these podcasts off a little differently, so I'm gonna ship it over to Wendy and we're gonna get started with our first game.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

All right.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

That's right. We're going to start with a word association game. Super simple. I'll say a word and you just say the first thing that comes to your mind.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Okay, let's do that.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Are you ready?

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Yes.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Okay.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Pulling up the words. Pixel own.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Responsive web interface, UI component. React animation, video games framework, JavaScript, design.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Designer, interaction, movement prototype.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

YOSI grid.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Bootstrap, colors, Drawing, Debugging. What?

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Done.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Yay.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Did it. Yay.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

That was hard, but it was cool. I like the words.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Great job. Great job. Now, Aileen, is. Is English your first language?

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

No. No, it's not. It's Spanish.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

No, it's not. So that's even more difficult. Wendy, thanks for doing a word association game, but you did amazing. That's what it was. You did amazing.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Thank you.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I'm just kidding. Wendy, that was incredible. But speaking of languages. Yeah, I mean, I'd like to know. I've started. I feel like we started out every episode a little bit differently. I'd like to know. We talked a little bit about documentation when we chatted with Amy June Heinlein.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

And I'd like to chat with you a little bit about how is the documentation in Spanish for open source software? Is it non existent? Is it solid? You know, where is that at?

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Well, that's a really great question. I think it depends on the project itself. I mean, how backed it is and how used it is. So, I mean, you can also tell by the surveys sometimes that you can find. And most of them are like, yeah, where are the, you know, developers using it? And most of them are non existent in Latin America. Maybe Brazil. You can find Brazil as a country that, you know, oh yeah, there's people using that and I think it's basically because of that. Not because they're not using it, but you know, it's a language barrier, I guess from the service itself.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

There's no service in Spanish when they do it. So documentation wise, I would think it's adoption, like if that specific tool or framework or whatever, it's being used a lot. There's a lot of backup from people that speak Spanish that can help because it's not like the first thing they go do, right. I mean usually it's just English and happen the same with not just Spanish. Right. I've seen that also with more, you know, Asia, Japanese, Chinese itself in AI, right. Like the models are. They're really working with only Spanish, English.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

So it's kind of hard. But to your question, I guess it depends on the project and if the people you know are. There's like I've seen for example actually in the Node foundation when they were doing the website, there was, you know, they were requesting like, hey, we need people to translate this into different languages. So I guess if there was more this kind of, you know, approaches like we need help people get to do it. Because collaborating in open source sometimes can be scary if you haven't done it before. But I think it's something that as a native speaker it would be good and it's also helpful and not easy because, you know, it takes time. But yeah, I think if there was more invitations like that, I guess people would do it more often.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah, I like that answer. I think that you're right. I mean, if a project is obviously more used and more popular, more than likely you're going to have more people behind it. I do like this concept of like maybe using hackathons for just sheer documentation. You know, it's like oftentimes they're, they're used for a lot of different things. But yeah, just getting a couple of your pals on a Thursday night and just doing, doing documentation. I don't know. I mean, maybe, maybe.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I mean, I don't know how good I'd be.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Why a Thursday Hazen?

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I don't know, it's because we're filming this on Thursday and I'm like, how, how Friday? Yeah, because Friday. Sorry. Because Friday's a fun day and I can't do documentation on Fridays.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

So speaking of no deploys and no documentation.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah, so I gotta, I gotta hit the casino. I gotta get my dance on. So Aileen, we talked about Spanish or not English not being your first language. Tell us what it was like to grow up in the tech scene in Monterrey.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Well, I guess just geographically my city is really close to the US it's like a two hour drive mostly. So I think that kind of benefit, but mostly because since we are very close, there's a lot of consultant companies that work for really, you know, big clients in the US So my first job actually was in a consulting company where I get to work with a very big communication company, charter. So that was my first project. And you know, it's not just a small company. So I guess the city that I grew up in really helped me understand that was a hype. For example when Angular was there when frameworks from JavaScript started. So we got those because of the companies I worked with. But that wasn't the same for others.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Right. It just because we were close and there's a lot of consultant companies that do consulting for big, big companies in the US but talking about the community, there has always been a big community here. I've actually, there's one of the best universities is in my city. So there's a lot of students that actually when they graduate go to, you know, big companies in the U.S. so these people also created hackathons. They were coming companies like Facebook and they were doing hackathons and all those things. So that really helped the community and also individuals that, you know, there were just, hey, let's create meetups. When meetups were a thing back then, I guess these people were bringing all those things and sharing.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

So it helped a lot. Like I guess I, I'll say it was a very strategic place that I grew up in. So. And beneficial so that we were up to date in that kind of way because of the companies but also the community that grew up here.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah. Now did you go to school for like programming, software engineering, anything like that?

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

I'm actually an industrial engineer. Industrial system engineer. So I, I know at school I did art, but it wasn't my first thing. Like you would go to industrials which was basically we have a lot of companies here like working for big manufacturing. Right. But I didn't like it. And then I maybe speak good English, but I also teach English at some point and one of my co workers, he was studying computer science actually. So he told me like, hey, I'm doing this thing.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

And I was like you know, I'm doing kind of the same, but it's not the same. So I got interested and I asked him, like, hey, can you, you know, help me get into this first job? Right. I just practice. I liked it. I knew a little of the base of it just because I was doing R, but I liked it a lot. And I said, okay, I really want to do this for a living. And that's basically how I chose it.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Oh, I love that you said that.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

You do art. What kind of art did you do?

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

It was art for robot. Because in manufacturing you have to do it for the different kind of devices that you might do. So it was like, really basic, but, yeah, that kind of art.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

So do you mean like. Like technical drawings like that?

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Yeah. So for embeddings. So embeddings, they use C or R depending of the device. So if you're in manufacturing production, sometimes you use devices that need the kind of programming languages. So they teach you just the basic of it if you might need it, but not the core of the whole, you know, career itself.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Okay. Okay. So I think we were mishearing you. And so I want to make sure that we're clear, though. And so we're not thinking that you said. Do you say you went to, like, you went to school for art? I just want to make sure, because I wasn't. I'm not connecting the dots between what you're. Yeah, no.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Industrial engineering. Industrial engineering and system engineering.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Okay. Wendy, I was mishearing something as well. That makes sense. So. So you were. Yeah. Designing robots. What is the.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

There's like a branch. It's called, like. It's really cool. It's called like. I don't know, it sounds so cool. But it's like when the.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Mechatronics.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Mechatronics, yeah.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

That kind of.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah. What a cool sounding. That's exactly what it is. What a cool sounding. Like, I always thought that that was really interesting because it's like the mix between mechanical engineering. Right. And like, software, but also, like electrical. It's just like, you have to like.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah, it's like, let's create robots. Right, guys? Right. I think that's really cool. So, all right. So went to school, got your first job at one of these consultancy companies. Where. Where did your career take you from there? So after that role or during that role, did you have different positions there or did you move on to a different company? What led you to where you're at now?

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Yeah, I guess so. It started there with a consultant company and actually I joined that company for Java. You know, we were going to be. There was starting with Java but there was this huge, you know, as I mentioned demand where JavaScript frameworks starting to appear with backbone and Angular and node at that time so you could be a full stack. Right. That's what I guess was the hype of all of this happening and they wanted to create applications on the thing was that there was not enough talent and not enough. I mean nobody teach you that in the university, right? So inside of this consultant company they start creating like kind of boot camps like okay, you know that let's create, let's start learning these things. And that's how we.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

It was a group of people that okay, let's start with working with this technology. So it was cool. And I learned a lot. Like a lot a lot because you know, we got like a good relationship also with the clients so we would talk for with their engineering. So I learned like a lot. I think that was the job where I learned a lot. And then I decided that, you know, I like JavaScript. And then moving forward in tech world you change jobs very often I do one for product and then move again to our consultant company.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

So it's been all around I guess as more companies are starting to open also in my city regarding product companies. That's how I also get like more exposure or more knowledge using different frameworks. Not know at that time was Angular then you know, react appear vue. Yeah, I guess I just fell in love with with the JavaScript ecosystem and that's how I built off my career. Like I liked it, I wasn't a curious of. I don't want to learn any other, you know, framework. I just love the ecosystem. So any new framework and you know, world consultants there's different clients that want different things.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

So it really helps in the exposure of things that I learned and things.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

That I wanted to you and what brought you to AI, you know, besides OpenAI and all the other things that started coming out. But like what drove you down that path of like well this is really interesting and I want to learn a lot more about this and I want to kind of start becoming a subject matter expert and you know how I can meld AI with JavaScript frameworks and browser based, you know, stuff. So yeah, I'd love to know like what was that? What was that moment? Or when were you just like oh my gosh.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Yeah, I guess it was 2019. I guess I was again at Accenture. I returned to that consulting company and you know, it was when self driving cars were in. And there was at that time the big boom of deep learning, which is a branch of AI. And I was like, this is really interesting but you know, I've had five, six years already of career, like I would need to start learning Python. Would I would I be able to know, get a job not knowing anything about this? So I was like, I really love it. I mean understanding for me it was amazing seeing self driving cars, anything regarding deep learning and I wanted to understand that. I was like, I just do JavaScript and maybe other language, but how could I make a career out of this? So this was when I thought what do I do? But then when I started, you know, asking these questions, I started seeing that there was this library called tensorflow.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

So tensorflow has a library for Python but also have it for JavaScript. I was like, okay, maybe I don't need to learn another language from start to start, you know, applying things that I know or from the language that I know. And that's how it started. Google had this library for you to build things with JavaScript either with within node or within your JavaScript client application. And there were a lot of libraries. Actually TensorFlow evolved from I believe something called ML5 or something like that. So there were a lot of people with the same, you know, concern like how, how do we get this into the web? Right? Because I think nowadays it's easier to get a hand of AI, but back then it was just Python and you know, how do you showcase these things? How do you show them if they're just code? Right. There was no gradient at that time where you could just demo something with the ui.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

So I guess that was like the constraint and people said, okay, let's bring this to the web. And that was the first approach that I had and I started learning actually there was a really nice Coursera from Andrew and Lawrence teaching the actual library of TensorFlow in Python. But you could definitely just use, know, kind of transform some of those things into the JavaScript library. So yeah, that's how it started. And it has evolved a lot since then.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Oh no doubt, right. I don't know of another technology that has quite evolved as quickly as what we would call AI, right, or LLMs or whatever you want to, especially in the visual space. I, I continually get baffled at the visual output of things like Mid Journey and Runway and all these other kind of like video tools, like text to video tool is. They're absolutely incredible. They're wild. Everyday Heroes is brought to you by Hero Devs HERO Devs offers secure drop and replacements for your end of life open source software. Through our never ending support product line, you get to stay compliant with the likes of SOC2 and HIPAA and Fedramp and all the other acronyms and regulatory bodies you can think of. All while also getting real vulnerability remediation.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

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‍

Hayden Baillio:

Okay, I'm following your journey. You got super interested in this. You found some other like minded people that were like, yeah, this is really interesting since that moment of oh wow, this is, I want to learn a lot more about this. When did you start taking on the mantle of educating people about this?

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Yeah, so I Learned this was 2019 and they invited me to a. We have another community here in my, in my city called Women who Code. So I was working at another consulting company with like, hey, they want somebody to give a talk. And I was like, okay, I can try. I mean I'm learning This thing of TensorFlow, I think I can give something. And that was my first talk regarding AI and JavaScript. And that was back 2019. Right.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

And I really liked it and people were like, wow, does it exist? This is amazing. I really liked it. The thing was that, you know, Covid happened meetups. You know, there were no more meetups, no more conferences, no more these kind of things. And of course this was very experimental, right? I couldn't find the work that I was doing. It was not related to it. So there was no way for me to continue doing this on a way professionally. So I moved away from that for a while.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

But then people started to come back after Covid and I said like, you know what, I'm still interested in this thing. I want to continue doing this thing and learning about it. And also it had evolved, right? I mean it didn't wait for me to, you know, to see what it was. So it was, it did evolve a lot. So there were a lot of books, there were a lot of things and people that were already having a community out there. So I was like, yeah, I'm going to continue, I want to learn this. And that was I guess 2021 or 22. I guess when I again started doing this was inside a consultant company.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

They were doing this, it was called Engineering days. And they were saying, hey, if you want to share something to the company itself, could you submit a talk? And I say, okay, I want to take this back. And another thing that has helped is when I do talks is because I also want to learn more. It gives me like a push to, okay, if I need to teach something, I must understand it to actually teach somebody. Right? So I was like, okay, if I want to get back on track on learning these things, I need to push myself on this. So I submitted the talk, it was selected and this was in Romania. So I traveled to Romania to give this talk. So I.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

This was my first travel to give a talk and I really liked it. And from that on, that's been how I've been doing it. So it just started with that one talk and then I have not stopped since then.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I love that I met you at a conference for the first time in person.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Yeah.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Viewconf usa And I was lucky enough to get to go for Hero devs, which I think now is as good a time as any to introduce Herobevs to everybody watching or listening. Well, Aileen, I think it's time for our second game of the episode. Are you ready? All right, Wendy, take it away.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Great. This is a game that we made up called Fork, Slide, Star or Deprecate. In this game, I'm going to say anything from an open source tool or a programming language to a ridiculous concept in tech that we made up and you decide whether you want to fork it and improve it. Star it, leave it alone or deprecate it, retire it entirely. Are you ready?

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

I think so, yes.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Okay. TensorFlow JS. It's browser based AI models. Fork, star or Deprecate.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

I think Star and improve also. Yeah.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Okay. Ethical considerations when integrating AI into web applications.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Star.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Google Colab as an accessible AI tool for education.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Star. Okay.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Browser based real time object detection.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Star.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Full of stars.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

I love them.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

All good.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Okay.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

This one's easy.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Diversity programs like women, techmakers.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

I'll say it's a star, but I also think there should be a fork to make it more bigger. Bigger and bigger.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah, bigger.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Okay. All right. How about the shift from server rendered web applications to Smarter Client side AI powered experiences.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

AltonStar.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Okay. A web framework that generates coffee recommendations based on your code quality. So you don't like coffee. Got it.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

I love coffee. I love, really, really love. But you know, like, I don't think we need AI still for those Things, but yeah.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Okay, last one. You ready?

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Okay.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

An AI that adjusts your website's theme and colors based on your current mood.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Oh, come on. I love that one so much.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

It was amazing. But only if you see it. I mean, if you're at the office or anything, everybody would know how you're feeling, Right? I mean, so if there's two places.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Or not, that is.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

So what color would it normally be for you?

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Yes.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Do you think. What color do you think it would be?

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

I think I like blue, I guess I'm not sure if that's. That would set a mood.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I don't know what mood that is. Is that. Is that just. Is that naturally, like, sadness?

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

I feel like. I think that's why I chose food.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

There you go. You're like, okay. Oh, wow.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Hayden, what about yours? What would your color be?

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Oh, man.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

On a regular basis for your purple baby. Generally.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Purple. I got it. Purple. I love purple. And I don't know, I feel like it would also be a little bit of yellow. I'm usually pretty happy. There'd be some times where it's like, I don't know. What's a really stressful color? That's not red? I.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I associate red with anger. What's like to y'all, what would be a stressful color?

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Orange.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Orange.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Orange. Oh, that's anxiety. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's fair. I think I'm completely biased. Even though is purple and embarrassment in the movie. I can't remember Fear Purple. Oh, yeah.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Well, I don't really have that, but I don't have that.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Does it have to match the movie that.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I know. I just, you know, I am biased, though, because that movie is. Is. Is really fun. It's a great, great movie. What about yours, Wendy?

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Good one. I think I'm whatever cheerful color. Green, pink, yellow most of the time. Except for when I'm using HubSpot, Salesforce or Asana. Then it's red. It's red all the time. It will be flashing red like this.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Red. I'm angry. I am angry.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Would that be a fork or a deprecate for those apps?

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Oh, gosh. HubSpot fork. I think it's a really good idea. It just needs, like, it needs a little help. It just needs a little nudge in the right direction. I like it. Salesforce. Oh, God.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Honestly, deprecate. I really, really don't like Salesforce. Asana fork. It. It's a good foundation of things.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

It could be.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I will say this, Aileen. Wendy's our toolmaster. Here as well. But I'll say this, like, HubSpot and Asana are great. And to this day, I still don't understand why there's just not a CRM system that checks all the boxes that people need on a regular basis. Right. It's just like. It's like.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I don't know why there's still things missing when it's like you've been around forever HubSpot and they're not even included in, like, the, you know, the most premium package wherever. You're just like, oh, yeah, if you spend a bajillion dollars, you get this. It's like, no, not even with that. It's like, why isn't this stuff just standard? This, like, stuff that just makes sense. Why is it not standard? Anyways, but me and Wendy could have a whole other podcast venting about HubSpot and Asana.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Yeah, that would be great.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

We'll invite a HubSpot, like, game developer on here sometime. We'll have some words.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah. So, okay.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

All right. Circling back.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah, circling back, though. Thanks for playing our game. Was that the last one? Right, Wendy?

‍

Wendy Hurst:

No, it's not the last one. Are you crazy?

‍

Hayden Baillio:

What was the current mood? I was saying, like, the current mood. The website theme.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Oh, you know, the last one.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

For that. For the.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

For that game.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

For that game.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Yes.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Got it. So, okay, we can officially move on. Wendy mentioned Women Tech Makers, and I know you're an ambassador of the program. Tell us a little bit about the program and what other. You also said you were in a group. Women. Women in Code, I believe you said there in Monterrey or wherever you live right now. And so, yeah, I'd love to.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Tell us a little bit more about, like, it seems like you're passionate about getting more women into tech and being involved in that community. Let us know.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Yeah, so there's this. There was this big community called Women Code, actually, after Covid. This was a world organization and they needed to shut it down because of sponsors. I think it was. This was last year or the year before it.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Yeah, it was last year, I think.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Yeah. And so that was a big community here. Even during COVID they were doing events. I was not part of that community, but they invited me to do a talk, and it was really hard for that community. Right. Because they were very active. Even though Covid, the rest of the communities died. They really died.

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Aileen Villanueva:

But this one just kept going every month. And so I'm also a gdg, which is a Google developer group, also in my city. So we organize events and so, and they have like another branch which is Women Take Makers. So I started first as a Women Take Maker and I got invited to, I believe this was 2023 to one of the Google events. And you know, it was amazing to meet other Women Take makers and GDG organizers and all of these things. So this got me like, really, really, really hyped. And that's when we, when we opened the gdg and we've never before had events for women thing makers, but we met at that event actually. And that's when we said like, hey, we, we lived in the same city.

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Aileen Villanueva:

Why don't we start, you know, creating also events because there's like the me, the one, the big one, which is Mexico. So they do a lot of events in Mexico City, but we didn't do it one in my city. So we met there. It's very different, you know, to just meet online, to actually meet in person. And actually the same women that I met there, we are the same that are in the gdg. So I think it really helped that we met in person, that we met other community members. And actually we're planning our next women tagmaker event this year along with the one in Mexico, but we're trying to get one for our city again this year. We did one last year and yeah, I met really incredible women in my city that I didn't know that I, I wouldn't have known without this program.

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Aileen Villanueva:

They're very talented, they have a lot to share, and I'm just always learning from these people. They're amazing. And it's a very collaborative community, I may say, because it's not, since it's also in Latin America, we also have a group from people from Colombia, from Chile. So there's, there's a big community out there. So you feel supported and, and, and eager to do these events because everybody's doing it and everybody's putting an effort on doing these things because it's an extra. You, you don't get paid for these things, but you do it because you love, you love this. You, you like to see people getting excited because actually that's how I got excited into tech, like going to events. And I was like, I like this.

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Aileen Villanueva:

And maybe there's people that don't know what to do because, you know, it's very difficult to choose a career. And if you see other people doing something, you might say, okay, yeah, I think I might do this. So I think this is why we do it because you never know who, who might need These kind of demands to know what they want to do, you know, because they love it, not because something else.

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Hayden Baillio:

Yes. Starting the last point that you touched. That was what I was going to, was, was what I was planning kind of a following up on is I feel very blessed to work alongside a lot of really talented women engineers here. But like, I think that oftentimes starts at just a younger age. Like, you have to get to kids that are younger to get them to even understand. Like, hey, there is a community of women in Mexico, in Colombia, wherever, that do tech. Like, we do software engineering. And like, we want more women.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

And so I feel like that's, that's a big deal. Even here in the US I know that there's, there's, there's programs. It's just. And this is across the board. I think if any, if any group of people wants more, like, they have to go at it to a younger, you know, to a younger crowd because, like, oftentimes I grew up in a very small town in Texas and there are so many things that when I got to college, I had no even, I had no idea even existed as an option, like, for me. Right. I just, I came up from a small town and when you mentioned things like, you know, you went to the consultancy agency just to. And that's where you learned a lot of new software and frameworks about that stuff.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

It's like, it's clear that even you weren't getting that kind of information outside of ingraining yourself inside of a place where like, it was almost forced upon you to learn. And so, yeah, I love that. Well, I, I hope that you branch out into like the high schools or whatever or the colleges and, and restart recruiting because it's. I think that would be really cool. That's awesome though. So start with the GDG though. Google Developer Group. It's your second year this year.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Yes. We started in 24, I guess at the beginning. I don't know, 23. 23 actually. Also we have one hero, it's also from the city, which has been our contact with you. Hayden. Hayden has actually helped on many of our events. Hero devs.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

But yeah, it's been. We're gonna be two years now. We're also planning. We have a virtual event on February. We're gonna talk about what's going on 20, 24, what's coming. But yeah, we try to keep active. There's. So it's not just me, it's other people.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

One hero, other women, take makers, people from different backgrounds. That's what we want, right? So we can target. Sometimes we go to colleges, sometimes it's very on the afternoon on a company. So we can target people who actually just do the work. So we try to be really diverse on what type of events and places and days that depending that who can, who can go to those events.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I still think networking is the single greatest skill you can have to get yourself your next job. I still think networking is like, it's like if your next job or if you want a job, I still think networking is the best option for you. So we're here now. It's 2025. Aileen, you've been speaking more and more at, at conferences. What does this year's schedule look like? Are you going to be, Are you going to be out there giving more talks in places?

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

I hope so. I hope so. Yeah. I mean, is this. I mean, it looks really great. Like, oh yes, you have been too many conferences. But if you see the rejections, I mean, there's also high rejected, right? Like because there's many talented people. So I feel really blessed that I get to, to do events every year.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

But there's a lot of events of different types of different kinds all around the world. So yeah, I feel blessed to be selected and speak about the things that I'm passionate about. But yeah, it might look very successful. But yeah, there's also a lot of projections. So as, as of now, I have one talk on REACT Miami, so I'll be there also talking about the web, talking about AI. So it's going to be amazing. I cannot say what's coming next because I still don't know. So it's also, it would be a surprise for me too.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

And I'll be glad if I get to talk in another place about the same thing.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Isn't that just success in general though, Aileen? Like, it's like you see the, you know, the Instagram moments, you see the LinkedIn moments, and you don't see all the times that someone failed or messed up or, or got rejected. Right? Which I think that statement alone was, is probably powerful to someone. Hopefully listening or watching this episode is just if you've only sent a request for paper. Rfp, is that what they call it? Right. If you've only sent a couple out, it's like your chances are small. You just gotta, you gotta go out there and you gotta put yourself out there and you gotta be willing to hear no. I mean, essentially you become a salesperson for yourself. Right? And it can be hard to get.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

No. And so be Success is one of those places where I feel like you have to be really okay to be on the other side of rejection. It's like you have to get to the other side of rejection to truly, I feel like, be successful. It's like you're going to fail or lose or, or get rejected by somebody or somebod thing or, or some council, whatever committee, and you just got to be able to trudge on forward. So I love that. But yeah, I mean, you have though, you've been active, you've been given talks and this is how it starts, right? You get the ball rolling and now you've gotten some talks and so you can reference those talks and you can say, look, I've talked that this conference and this conference. So I love that. What is.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I haven't asked anybody on this podcast yet this. So I'm very excited to ask you, like, what is Aileen's like 5, 10 year vision? What, what, what do you want to be, you know, in five years? Where do you want to be in five years? And like, what do you want to be doing with your career?

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

You know, it's, it's hard to know right now. Like, actually I was hearing something and not because my life depends on AI, because it doesn't. But, you know, things are changing really, really fast and not just on tech world. It's. Everything changes so fast. So I would like to continue working on AI not because it's a hype, not because, you know, it's what it's going to be building from the next couple of years, I guess, but because I liked it. But at some point I would also like to, you know, just have a coffee shop. I actually would like to have a coffee shop sometime in the next, you know, maybe 10 years and just move away from tech and just do it because, you know, I loved it and on the side because, you know, I loved it.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

And that's still what I'm. What I'm doing today. Like, I do the speaking because I like to learn and I like to listen what everybody has to say about this, stay up to date. But at some point it's too much. Sometimes it can be overwhelming. So yeah, for the next couple of five years, I would like to continue doing something like this or the way that it might evolve. But maybe two years from now I would just want to have a coffee shop and just copy to people.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Your answer now makes so much more sense to the coffee recommendation that you talked about. When you said some things don't need AI, I was like, yeah, you're right. But now it makes more sense. You're like, listen, don't, don't f. With my coffee. Right? Like I said, coffee shop does not equal tech for me. Like, you're like, you're like, please do not. Yeah, that's so funny.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Coffee is for humans.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah, yeah. I'd like to watch an AI drink coffee. Huh? Yeah, exactly. No, I love coffee as well.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Make suggestions all day, but it's not going to drink it.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah, yeah. Oh, man, that's funny. Oh, that's an amazing goal though. I mean, I think a lot of people, they have something that they enjoy, right? They have something that they have fun with that they love to learn about. But in a lot of ways, I think in all of corporate world, sometimes your end all goal is to not just work for another company for the rest of your life and to just do programming. It's like sometimes, you know, your, your goal is to have a coffee shop. I completely understand this sentiment. Wow, that's, that's amazing.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

So if you. I'll pause, I'll pause because I think it's time for game number three. Right, Wendy?

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Three.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah. Yeah.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

It's our final day with the show called Not My Job. We're going to ask you three questions that have nothing to do with your job in the real world or anything that we've talked today, talked about today and everything to do with what you know about odd festivals and celebrations.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Are you okay? And so I. What do I have to say or do something?

‍

Wendy Hurst:

It would be a multiple choice question. You don't have to, you don't have to stretch too hard. And of course the word odd is kind of in the eye of the beholder, so maybe some people think it's totally normal, but Chat GPT thinks that it's weird. So here we go.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

AKA Wendy's disclaimer on this, on this game is to say if you're into this, we're not calling you out for being weird or odd. There you go.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

I'll just have to say if I like it or not right now.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

You'll multiple choice.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

I'm going to ask. I'll give you some options and you choose.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Okay, here we go.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Here we go. Number one, what is the main event at Spain's La Tomatina Festival? A, a massive tomato fight in the streets, B, tomato themed cooking competitions or C, a parade of giant tomato floats?

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Hey, that is correct.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

A massive tomato fight in the streets.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Yes, I've seen that.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Sounds fun. Yeah. I'm in it. I'm in it.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Sounds really fun.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

I would love to go for that. La Tomatina is held in Bunol, Spain. It's an annual event where participants throw tomatoes at each other in a huge, messy food fight.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Wait, Wendy, can I just want to.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Do the laundry after?

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Can I just. Can I do a throwback, though, to the last one we did where you did the crazy inventions and you had the. The guy that invented something where when you were on a run, you could eat a tomato at the same time. It was a real invention, Aileen, where, like, it was, like, shoulder contraption that would allow you to eat a tomato.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Robot that, like, eat tomatoes while you're on a marathon run.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Healthy eating throwback. I love it.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Looks useful.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

All right, number two, what do participants do during the Cooper's Hill Cheese Rolling Festival in England? A, elegantly chase after cheese to showcase their dairy devotion. B, recklessly throw themselves down a hill chasing a wheel of cheese. Or C, race to eat a giant block of cheese in under five minutes.

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Aileen Villanueva:

B.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

It is. B, recklessly throw themselves down a hill chasing a wheel of cheese.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Oh, my gosh. I was. I was so happy for that. I was like, c sounds so painful.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

It sounds like a whole block of cheese.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

It sounds like something that, like, somebody who loves cheese would want to die over. You know, they'd be like, this is how I want to die. I want to die eating a block of cheese. But I do feel like everybody else would just be have a terrible time for a few days after that.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Yeah, it would be so uncomfortable. All right, for the last one, I'm gonna give you a choice.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Okay.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Do you want to learn about radishes, oranges, or monkeys?

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Oranges.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Okay, mud oranges it is. Here we go. In Italy, how is the battle of the oranges celebrated? Is it, A, participants build forts out of oranges? B, teams throw oranges at each other in a symbolic battle? Or C, a giant orange shaped hot air balloon is launched?

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

B.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

It's B. Teams throw oranges at each other in a battle. This festival is in Ivrea, Italy. It reenacts a medieval battle using oranges as weapons in a chaotic but symbolic street fight.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Nice. So tomatoes and oranges.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Tomatoes and oranges.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Never say citrus.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Who knew that throwing fruit could be so fun or celebratory or symbolic.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Does Mexico have any fruit throwing traditions or just chanclas?

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Not that I know of, but we have pinatas, so we, you know, we just can't do things.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

That's True.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

I do have a bonus question that relates to Mexico. You want me to ask it? I'm going to ask it. We're going to start with a bonus question number four. Maybe you know the actual answer, not just guessing. Here we go. Okay, let's see what happens during the night of the radishes in Mexico. A, people carve elaborate sculptures out of radishes. B, radishes are thrown at houses to ward off evil spirits.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Or C, a radish eating contest to determine the festival winner.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

I didn't know this was even existed in Mexico, so, you know I'm a traitor of my own. I don't know. I. I'll say.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

B, going with throwing again.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Yeah.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

First of all, Mexico's a big place. I don't expect you to know everything about your country. The answer is A, people carve elaborate sculptures out of radishes. It's in Oaxaca, Mexico. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. Okay. Oaxaca, it's the night of the radishes. It celebrates creativity with locals carving radishes into designs and sculptures, which are often depicting religious or cultural scenes.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

I have to look up pictures of that.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I gotta look up some of these radishes. Yeah, I gotta see what. What, What a solid radish, like, art. Art looks like. Well, that was fun. I learned a couple things, and obviously, how. One, how ChatGPT can be very siloed to the same topics if you're in the same thread. And then two, how many countries like to throw things? Yeah.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

And I'm just wondering if we have, like. I mean, I threw things for a living for a while, you know, a track. So I like to throw things, too, but I'm just like, do we have any festivals where. Oh, yeah, we do. Like, there's tons of pumpkin throwing contests around. Like the fall time period, actually. Oh, my gosh. So much stuff gets thrown.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Okay. Anyways. But you don't throw pumpkins at people. You don't, like, pelt people.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

That would be dangerous.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Well, even if you threw an orange, Hayden, I feel like if. Even if you threw an orange or a tomato in your hands, it might be a weapon.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Might hurt somebody for sure. Death by citrus might be. Might be the title of this episode. Who knows? I'm gonna peel the earth skin with this. With this orange.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Sorry.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

No more puns. I'll stop. I'll stop now. Oh, God. Okay. This has been amazing talking with you today, Aileen. I have one more question before we end, if that's cool. This is one that I asked Everybody.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

So if you could send a one word message to every maintainer, contributor, organizer of open source, what would that one word say?

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Amazing.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Amazing.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That people are doing amazing, amazing work. I mean, I would like to say more words, but I hope amazing it's enough. I don't think so.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

But yeah, I think a lot of.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

People would like to hear that though that the. What that what they do were a lot of them for. For free. Right. Just out of the grace of their heart is their passion project is that they're doing amazing work. And I love that. That one's great. Aileen, I keep forgetting to do this on other episodes, so I'm not going to forget to do it on yours.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Where can someone find you if they want to follow what you're up to, connect with you, whatever. Any socials that you want to throw out there?

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Yeah, on social they can find me. AEN VL usually like that on Twitter, Blue Sky, GitHub. So yeah, I, I'll throw some things out there when I'm doing anything and I share on my socials.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Awesome. And then if someone is right now listening to this in, in. In Monterey and they want to join your event, can they just reach out to you or can they go to some a website in particular to go to the GDG or to one of your Women techmaker events? Yeah. Where can someone find out more about that?

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Yeah, definitely. So yeah, they can definitely reach out, but there's actually web pages for either GDG or Women Take Makers to actually look for an event near you. So it would actually take you to an event that's happening near you anywhere you are. There's. We are already preparing stuff for International Women's Day so there's going to be a lot of events. So definitely go look for those that are near you in International Women Take Makers webpage or Google Developer Group's webpage.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Awesome. Awesome. Love that. Okay, well Aileen, thank you for coming and chatting with us.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Thank you for having me. It was amazing. I loved the games and I love the topics. It was really amazing talking to you.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I'm glad, I'm glad. We had a lot of fun too. And thank you for watching, listening, whatever you're doing, maybe you're working out and you got this in your ear and you're just listening to me and Wendy talk about things with cool people. But regardless, thank you. Share it with somebody that you think would get a nugget of wisdom from the episode and hopefully you keep on being the heroes of your tech world. We'll talk to you later.

‍

Aileen Villanueva:

Peace.