Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

The thing, especially when you're working with open source developer tools like, you are beholden to the entire community. You're not beholden to one user, you're not beholden to one customer. You have to make decisions about the product in the community that will impact everybody. And a lot of that does require understanding what developers go through and also some of the technical challenges specifically. So I think it just. We're seeing a fragmentation of what developer advocacy is and people like to do the fun stuff and so do I. Like it's fun, but I think it can be more valuable and more rewarding when you also do the hard stuff too. And that does require, I think, that experience or time in the seat, as they say.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I need a hero, Hero, hero. There goes my hero. Let me be your hero. You're listening to the Everyday Heroes podcast brought to you by HeroDevs. Welcome back to Everyday Heroes, your new magnificent obsession 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.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I'm your host, Hayden Baillio, and I'm here with my co host, Wendy Hurst. Wendy, I just have to say before I ask you how you're doing, every time I say that little line, these are their stories, I go straight to like Law and Order svu and then I go straight association goes straight to the Office episode where Michael Scott auditioned with the full episode of Law and svu. And so I just want to know, maybe our editors can do this in post, but I want the dun dun, dun dun, dun, dun dun. Like after I say these are their stories.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

These are their stories.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yes. I hope they. I hope they do well. What's on your mind though, Wendy?

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Today on my mind, I've been thinking about really good pens. You know, like click, click pens. I do still write, believe it or not, just on paper. Sometimes I take a lot of notes around my house. I have a lot of post it notes. It's just like around. I just like taking notes and I appreciate a really good pen that's so vintage. Believe how hard they are to find.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Writing notes down. That's so vintage.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

I hate these kind. Just the basic. They're the worst. They never work.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah, just regular Bic pens. Yeah. I mean, yeah, they don't work.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

I'm gonna throw them out. All of them. All 40 of them. That come in a pack for a dollar. I don't know what I expected.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah, I get that. I mean, they're really there for like, they're for like, hey, can you sign my. You know, they're for, like, canvassing. They're just like, I have a billion of these pins and they cost a cent each. And so I just need you to like, sign. Can you sign on my thing here? Yeah, that's fair. Good pins, though. Absolutely.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

And the answer is no because they don't work.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah. Are you like a gel pen? Are you like a. Is there like a certain tip size that you like, like 0407?

‍

Wendy Hurst:

I love a good 0.4.5.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Wow.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

I can't believe I know the answer to these questions. It's so ridiculous.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

U and this is our episode on pens.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

I love a good 0.4 or 0.5 pen. My favorite brand of pen right now is a zebra pen. I don't have any around because everyone loves them so much. They just take them, you know.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

But yeah, that's my favorite.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah. I think it's crazy. Bic made a lot of pens. Right. And pencils and stuff like that, I believe. And they also make, like, lighters. It's really. And you know, it's like, it's such an interesting company.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

They make lighters.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

They make lighters, like a big lighter.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

They also not work well.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

They're also very simplistic. They're like very simple things. But as a kid, this is the last thing. And then we'll have to get out of this host talk so we can actually introduce our guest today. But the last thing is, you know, every pencil, every number two pencil has HB on it. And so I would always be like, that's my pencil when I was a kid. Right. And be like, you're using my pencil because it had my initials on it.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Could HB Your initials?

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah, like every other kid that has that and those initials. Or maybe I was just, I don't know, a troubled kid. But let's, let's, let's introduce our. Our guest today and let's get this party started. Our guest today is someone who truly embodies the heart of the developer community. She's a seasoned developer, speaker, writer, and community leader with a background as diverse as it is impressive. She has an MBA in marketing, a foundation in journalism, and a healthy career stint in finance. She's not just an open source advocate.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

She's also a master storyteller and strategists. Currently, she's the lead developer advocate at OutSystems, but you might also know her from her impactful work at Ionic, Replay and Cypress. Over the past few years. She shared her expertise at 30 plus events, helping thousands of developers tackle some of the most frustrating parts of their work like testing, debugging, mobile deployments, and yes, even fighting with YAML. Beyond her technical job, she's passionate about building inclusive developer communities. She leads Atlanta JavaScript and out in In Tech Atlanta, where she brings people together to share knowledge and support one another. Whether she's exploring AI's role in DevOps or advocating for open source tools, she's always focused on empowering developers to thrive. So please join me in welcoming the incredible Cecilia Martinez.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Cecilia, thank you for joining us today.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Wow, thank you so much for having me and that amazing introduction. I do have to say I was very excited about the pen talk initially, but then got intimidated when you started talking about millimeters and I do not have that level of pen knowledge. I was going to be like oh yeah, the Signo G2. That's the way to go. But then I was very quickly out penned. So kudos to your pen knowledge. Wendy.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Necessity out of necessity only.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Well, I am also one of those people that likes to write things down sometimes, especially just to get my creative thoughts out on paper as opposed to always just using digital stuff. It's just nice to put pen to paper sometimes. So yeah, I've had to go through my fair share of pins and figure out which ones I like the most. So no worries though, you know, pin game is for everybody. But we don't start this episode off with anything other than games. Cecilia so we're going to play one. And Wendy, I want you to tell her what she's going to play. Take it away.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Today we're playing a game called this or that. I'll say two things and you just say which one you would choose. Really easy. Are you ready?

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Sounds simple enough. It probably won't be, but we'll see.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

That's okay. React or Angular?

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Angular.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

GitHub or GitLab GitHub VS code or Webstorm As a Code editor Vs Code Coffee or tea?

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Tea.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

What kind of tea?

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Oh lots. Earl Grey is my favorite, but I drink spearmint tea twice a day. Also I like a good spearmint tea like a matcha.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Books or movies?

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Books.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Pizza or tacos?

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Tacos.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Morning person or night owl?

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Night owl.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Cats or dogs?

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Dogs.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Last one. Netflix binge or outdoor adventure?

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Oh, that one's tough. Netflix binge.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

What would you binge?

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Oh boy so many things. I was going to say Outdoor Adventure just to sound. I feel like that's, like, the one you're supposed to pick, but honestly, it's Netflix Binge.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Yeah.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

I like a good spy thriller. Yeah, I mean, it is. I gotta be me and me is spy thriller.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Did you watch Black Doves?

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

I did, yes, I watched Black Doves. I've been watching Night Agent. That one just came back. Yep. Season two. You know, we watched the squid games over the holidays. You know, fun holiday fare. So I'm even a Bridgerton girl.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

I'll say it.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

That's all good. Yeah, that's all good. Thanks for playing the game. I realized that we asked you react or angular. When you asked you react or angular. But I bet your answer is really vue.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

It is. Yes, absolutely.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

If I know what I know, I'm pretty sure your answer would have been vue given even a third option at all. That's awesome. So, okay, so, Cecilia, you want to know about you. This is about you. So I want to start at the beginning. Where'd you grow up?

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Oh, that's already a complicated question. I was born in South Texas, in Corpus Christi, where Selena is from. The singer Selena, if you've ever seen that movie.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Not familiar.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

And then I moved to Michigan when I was 10. So I did some time in Michigan, went to college in upstate New York and lived in New England for a while.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Sorry, Cecilia, you were like, I did some time in Michigan. Like, you went to prison.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

I mean, I'm not good with cold. Like, I live in Atlanta now. I like the heat. I like, do not like cold. I do not like snow, ice. Like, it's pretty for two minutes, and then I'm immediately over it. And so I'm with you.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

I am with you. I live in Utah.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Yes.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Hayden once asked me, how can you hate the snow so bad? And I just told him, like, I grew up by the canyon. So you hike to school in 3ft of snow every day as a child and then tell me that you still like the snow?

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Yeah, I mean, like, basically, like, once I started driving, you just take your life into your hands, like, every day from, you know, September through April, just with ice on the roads. And so. Yeah, but the summers are beautiful. Michigan has beautiful summers. I've only been back twice since I graduated high school, so. But once was for Beer City Code, which is a really great conference in Grand Rapids. So, like I said, it's great in the summer. I have nothing against the beautiful Mitten State, but have.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Yeah, I'm loving my life in Atlanta now.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

So you. But you, as you said, did your time. You served your time.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Nice.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

I did. I did. Was actually funny because I went to the big house, you know, which is this Michigan football stadium. But it kind of plays into the prison theme a little bit.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

If I ever move out of Utah, if people ask me where I'm from, I'm going to say it exactly the way that you just said. All credit most of my life.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Okay, so we're sorry. And I interrupted you when you were talking about going to school in upstate New York. Is that what you said?

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Yeah. So I did my undergrad at a small college in Albany, New York, where I studied journalism. And that's where I kind of started my first career in journalism and worked at newspapers in upstate New York. And that was super fun. Local politics is very fascinating, very personal and. But yeah, did that for a while and then moved around New England until I came to Atlanta in 2018.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Very cool. Very cool. Okay, thanks for that kind of recap. So you've lived in Texas, you lived in Michigan, you went to school in New York, and you're in Atlanta now. Is Atlanta by far your favorite place so far?

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Yes. I love Atlanta for so many different reasons. When I. For Atlanta was the first place I came to, I was going through a career change at the time. I came here to do the. And I did the Georgia Tech program for software engineering. And the tech community here is just like really thriving, really welcoming. I got linked up with.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Oh, yeah. With women who code and the organizers there. And yeah, it was just kind of the first place I moved that I didn't like, wonder what was next, you know. And I really built a community here. And it's a great place to. To be as a woman in tech.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

It is. It's very much a tech hub. And so many conferences. Obviously the Georgia Congress Convention center is massive and so you can fit like six conferences at once in it. But it is a very. It's so many conferences are held in Atlanta. I like going to Atlanta. Me and Wendy, the first time we went, we found this place to throw an after party at called the Painted Duck.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

And it was one of the coolest spots. And the people there just shout out to. I don't remember her name, but shout out to the lady who was the current manager at the time because she was so cool and she was let us like, have a complete impromptu event there. And it was really fun. But yeah, loved our time in Atlanta. Scooted all over the place. It was so Fun just, you know, on the scoots going everywhere. Probably annoying to locals, honestly.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

But you know, we had fun, the local scoot too.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

I actually had my own scooter for two years. I live on the belt line, so scoot around a lot. Now I have a bike instead. But yeah, no, it's, it's super fun. Especially those hills downtown and they make for a fun ride.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

So going up is harder. Going down is really fun.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Going.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

One of the other people that came with us, they call it a Flintstone scooter where you like. Oh yeah, remember the Flintstones where they have to use their legs? That's their motor.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Right.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

You just kind of have to like help the scooter along.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

It was fun. It's always the most awkward motion of all time because you're. And like the scooters are heavy so you're trying to just push yourself up. Yeah. Part of the experience though, you know.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

It is, it is. So okay, so you said you went to the Georgia Institute to kind of get your start in software engineering. Right. So before that I know what you were doing, but tell everybody what were you doing before you kind of made this transition into tech?

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Yeah. So yeah, so I went to Georgia Tech for full stack software engineering. That was my first kind of official education in it. I technically started working with the web, I will say I think like most elder millennials with LiveJournal and like making custom LiveJournal MySpace layouts and designing things like that and throwback. Oh yeah, yeah. Luckily I, I think I lost the password to that account a long time ago and it's probably for the best. But in college I, when I studied journalism I actually studied. They were calling it digital journalism at the time, but basically it just meant that you knew how to post content onto websites and could like edit websites.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

And so I actually learned a little bit of that in my undergrad and so I always had kind of an interest in it. I would, I moved our college website into like a WordPress self hosted site and did some things in that area. Worked in journalism, did that for a few years. Really liked it a lot but found it kind of wasn't for me. So I worked in, transitioned to a role. I working in personal finance, I worked in banking and I got a brokerage firm called TD Ameritrade and Fidelity did all my licenses. I'm technically a licensed broker and could play stock trades, but I would not recommend coming to me for tips at this point. But I always kind of had that interest in software.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

I would make websites for bands, like people that I knew who were artists, like nonprofits and things like that. When I was working at Fidelity, we had a internal application as iPad app that we used. And I was pretty much one of the only people in the. In the branch who would use it because I thought it was faster than the paper forms. And so somebody from their kind of product team reached out to me and said, hey, you're using our app a lot. What do you like about it? Why are you using it more than other people? And I was like, oh, like, you made this. You made this app thing? And they're like, yeah, we have a team here that makes all of our internal apps. And I was like, it was kind of the first time that I had talked to somebody who had that role of, like, making software.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

And I got to interact with it and talk to them. And I realized I was like, oh, like, this is kind of like what I do with websites, but obviously way more interactive, like, way more interesting. And that kind of sparked my interest in learning more about how to do that. Like, oh, I want to be able to do this too. I would like to make something like this. And I started teaching myself JavaScript. Kind of got interested in that. And that's when I decided to do the program at Georgia Tech to study full stack software engineering.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Very, very cool. That is like a running pattern. Wendy, in our kind of our talk so far, which I guess it wouldn't be necessarily like, how anybody gets into stuff, although some people do get into stuff, but it's really like you were a power user of an app and then somebody reached out to you and asked you about it. And that's just like, it's funny because to me, I'm like, I keep on hearing this kind of brilliance and I'm relating back to like, what we can do at my work, where I'm just like, do we have people that are using. You know, we have a little different product, but it's like to anybody out there that's a product owner, if you're not going to like your heaviest users and like asking them, they clearly have insights for you. I love that. So also, I just got to take it back. You were mentioning MySpace.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I didn't want to interrupt you in the moment, but I'm just thinking like, man, with the state of social media, I feel like MySpace could make a comeback. If they were just like, hey, we're just going to give you a chronological order of your friends posts and we won't do anything fancy about it. Like, that's it. I'm like, I bet MySpace could make a comeback. I'm just saying, MySpace just comes out of the woodworks and, like, we're like, we're not X, we're not meta. Just. You can come over here and just chill. Make your thing.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Choose your top 16 again or whatever they ended up expanding it to. I'm sure it was a billion now, but anyways, very, very cool. Very cool. So found your way into tech. What was your first job entering the tech world? And where was that at?

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Yeah, so I was really fortunate. Right after I finished my program, I found a really cool place to work at. It was called fusionetics. It's essentially. It was a sports app. So it had web, it had iPad, and it also had mobile for both iOS and Android. And it's used by physical therapists, and it has motion capture. So you record somebody doing a series of exercises.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

And then there's a certain technique that physical therapists can use based on these exercises. Saying, okay, you like. It's like, raise your arms above your head. Okay. Like, your shoulder was too high up. You have tight traps. Kick your leg out. Okay.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Like, your hips are rotated. I'm not obviously, like, not. I did not do the science part of it, but it was essentially a app way to do that. And so you could record somebody doing the exercise with the video. It would use motion tracking to essentially, like, find their movements and identify where the patterns matched up with specific symptoms or training that needed to be done, and then design the exercise program to correct those issues. So if it is like, oh, you need shoulder strength because you need to stretch this or stretch that. So it was based on this real physical therapy methodology. We had physical therapists on staff to review everything, which was really interesting.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

So I was hiring as a junior software engineer to work on that whole suite of projects. And it was Angular and Net for the web app. And then they had native applications that were initially built by an outside agency, but then we had to maintain. And during the time that I was there, we were in the process of rebuilding those out in REACT Native. So I got to work across, like, the entire stack across different devices. I was doing a lot of testing and support as we were building out new features for the new versions, and it was super. I got to learn a lot right off the bat with a lot of hands on a small team.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Oh, that's cool. That's your first job. That's awesome.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

I know. I got so lucky.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

So, angular and Net. And I think this is a perfect Time before we jump into your next role for me to talk about the company that's powering this show and also can help you with Angular and. Net. Give me 30 seconds to talk about Hero Desk, please. All you everyday heroes is brought to you by Herobevs. Herobevs 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:

You don't have to choose between a new feature and security. And with over 800 clients, you can be confident that your unsupported open source is in good hands. So if you need us, we're here. And if you don't, well, that probably means you've migrated to the newest version. So huzzah either way. Visit Herodes.com to learn more. Now back to your regular scheduled programming.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Peace.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Okay, Cecilia, before we move on to the rest of your career progression so far, I think it's time for. Wendy. Do you think it's time for.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

It's always time for a game.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

It's always time.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Let's do it. We're going to play a game that we made up called Fork, 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, improve it, Star it, leave it alone, or deprecate it, retire it entirely. Fork, Star or Deprecate. Are you ready?

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

It's gonna be controversial. Let's go.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Okay, first one. Cypress for end to end testing. Fork Star or Deprecate Fork. Ionic for building cross platform mobile applications.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Star.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

A debugging tool that sings karaoke versions of error messages.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Star.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Okay, these are gonna get harder. Here we go. I hope that I learned to pronounce this correctly. Do I call it YAML?

‍

Hayden Baillio:

YAML?

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Is that how you say it? YAML. Okay. Oh my God, that's so embarrassing. Okay, a YAML linter that includes a passive aggressive mode to shame you for bad indentation.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Oh, deprecate. Okay.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

A mobile deployment app that requires you to solve a puzzle before releasing to production fork. Okay, how about a browser plugin that changes hello world examples to Hola Mundo in honor of inclusive coding?

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Star.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

It'd have to be lots of languages to be inclusive, wouldn't it?

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah, I feel like it'd be like IP driven. You know, like your IP is in a certain to change that. Right.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

I prefer the idea of just leaving it exactly like that. It's always, hola, mundo for everyone, for everybody. Maximum confusion.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Okay. How about a framework called CSS Debug Master 3000 that overlays memes on broken layouts?

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Ooh, Star.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Okay. A version control system that only lets you commit code if you write a haiku in the commit message.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Deprecate.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Okay. Not a poetry person. Noted.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

That sounds too hard.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Not a forced poetry person that has the. That needs to commit code. Right.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

I feel like I would try to, like, spend too much time crafting the perfect haiku, and they would be like, oh, my God, produce down, please. Just. Just. Just push it already. And I'm like, no, it's not perfect.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

It's not 5, 7, 5 yet.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Okay, last one. A mobile app deployment tool that throws virtual confetti for successful builds.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Ooh, Star.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

I know I would star that one too. Absolutely.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

We actually had a feature in Replay where when you marked a bug as solved, it would throw confetti. It was like a little experimental thing you could turn on.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Oh, amazing. So we weren't even that far off.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Yeah.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Yeah. I think Asana has a similar feature. We use Asana as our project management stuff. Whenever you like, mark a task as complete, it'll show you a little character, like a narwhal or a sloth or.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

That's right. It does do that. Yeah. We use Asana.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Also, I think there's a dolphin with some confetti.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Yeah.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

It's fun.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah. I'm pretty sure Wendy oftentimes just holds out, closing everything out until the meeting so that we can all see how many unicorns and narwhal she is.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

It's more fun to celebrate it with friends.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

You don't want to die. I mean, what's seeing a unicorn if it's just you seeing a unicorn? Right.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

It's just you seeing it. Then it doesn't. Did it really happen if no one else was there to see it?

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah. Is there really a unicorn out there?

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Did that task really get done if no one was there to see you click the box?

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I'm interested. Cecilia, since you said fork to the mobile deployment app that makes you solve a puzzle before releasing the production, what would you improve? Is it the type of puzzle? What's the improvement there that you think you'd put in?

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Also require it for web deployments, because mobile deployments, you already have to go through so many hoops to deploy Mobile deployment is not easy. You have to go through so many steps and you have to get approved by the app stores and all these different things. But web, like, you can just do whatever you want. Like, you can just fire off, like, horrible code and, like, terrible UI and things that aren't accessible. So I would say, like, I think you also have to solve a puzzle to deploy to the web too. You know, just make it more even.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

That is such an interesting thought process. And you're right. I mean, there is a lot more hoops to jump through when it comes to mobile deployment. Really interesting.

‍

Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Puzzles are fun. I do like puzzles puzzles.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Any of y'all play the LinkedIn puzzles that come on every single day? I didn't know that LinkedIn had games, right? But then one day it was like, do you want to play our games? And it's four games and they're all really fun. Two of them are like word association games, and then two of them are like puzzle games. One's very kind of Sudoku ish, and the other one's kind of a different puzzle. But my only issue with it is that they only give you one a day. They're like, this is the one today. It's like wordle, I guess, in that way. It's just like you get one today of each four of these games. But I'm like.

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Hayden Baillio:

Sometimes I'm like, I just want to binge play this for a little bit. But, yeah, there's no option to do that yet.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

I do that with the Connections archive. So, like, David played Connections, the New York Times game. It's like a grid of words or like, and you have to. And it's a 4x4 grid. And so each category will have four words, and you have to figure out which ones to group, essentially. So it could be. One recently had pipe, spinach, forearm and anchor. And it was all things associated with Popeye.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

But then it can be tricky because sometimes you don't know which one applies to which. And there's different ways to group words. And sometimes it's also about how the word is spelled. So it'll be like one of them was like, oh, all these words. The ending of it is also a beer name, like Bud and stuff like that.

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Hayden Baillio:

So Connections is. That's one of the games that's similar on LinkedIn. Just so you know there. That's very similar to that one. They start by giving you one word and they're like, what's the common denominator? And then it's like the. You miss it. And they give you a second word until five words. And they.

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Hayden Baillio:

Five total words. And the. The hints get progressively easier and easier to kind of.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Okay, cool. I'll check that out. Love it. Yeah. Because usually I'll wait until there's like 20 or so in the archives and I'll just like do them in a row because I'm the same way. As soon as I finish one, I want to do another one and I can't wait.

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Hayden Baillio: 

It is annoying though, that you can only do once one a day and you can't even do the previous ones. Just so you know, it's not like you can like go back. So. Yeah, it's one today, so.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Well, I appreciate the puzzle tip. You know, they're fun.

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Hayden Baillio:

They're fun. They're really fun. And I love a good puzzle too. And it seems like a really smart idea to do that for web development as well. You're right, because there is a lot of bad code out there now bringing it back to mobile development. After fusionetics, where'd your path take you after that?

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

I was at fusionetics and again, that was a really great opportunity to learn a ton about software development across these different devices and different types of apps. After that is when I started my open source journey and so I moved to a role at Cypress. And so Cypress is actually founded here in Atlanta and I met one of the co founders through Atlanta, JavaScript, back when he was the organizer for it and got involved. So Cypress is a. Is a testing framework. They came up in our game a little bit earlier, but many of you are probably familiar with it. And the idea of getting to build something and work on something that would then be used by developers to like build other things was really intriguing because it's like a multiplier. Right.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

And so like, for example, we found out that the NASA team was like testing with Cypress. And so I get to feel like, oh, cool. I'm like helping with a NASA team and all the different companies and every developer who builds anything and they test it. With Cypress, you get to feel like you're kind of part of that experience. And so that was super appealing to me too, as well as being able to get involved with Open source for the first time and dive into what that means from a community perspective. And so once I kind of got into that, I really fell in love with open source, with developer tools and being a part of that developer community and experience. And yeah, it's been something that's been really rewarding to be a part of since then. Whether it be with Cypress, which is testing, and then with Replay, which is a debugging, open source debugging tool.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

And then Ionic, which I've actually known about Ionic since I was working at Fusionetics. And I've been part of the community for years and years. And so it was really exciting to kind of end up there as part of my journey too.

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Hayden Baillio:

Yeah, well, there was a shift though, right? There was a shift from your time at Cyprus to your time at Replay and then to Ionic. There was a shift from being this technical hands on engineer to being more involved in the community, right?

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Yes.

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Hayden Baillio:

What was that transition and where did that come from?

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Yeah, so when I joined Cypress, I was about 20 people at the company, so it's still pretty small. And I know like if people who've worked at startups before, it can definitely be like all hands on deck, like whatever needs to be done, you do it kind of work. Right. And so I started. We didn't necessarily have a dedicated like community team. We didn't have much dedicated, like a lot of different things right. At a startup. And as part of my role, I was doing trainings and webinars, helping our users get up to speed with Cypress, helping them create resources, improving our documentation and creating different examples.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

And so at the same time I was also getting more involved with the Atlanta tech community, so with Women who code and a lot of different meetup groups here. And I was invited to speak at one of our local meetups and really enjoyed that experience. Just kind of getting to share. I actually spoke about a GitHub API and kind of interacting with the GitHub API. But yeah, it ended up being something I really liked doing. I love teaching people things. I like helping people feel successful and learn new things. And being involved with the Atlanta tech community was something that I really enjoyed.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

And it ended up filtering over into my work at Cypress, where I was working a lot with our developers, helping them be successful, like being in our support forums, realizing, oh, hey, we need an example for this, or there's lots of questions about that, maybe we should do a webinar on this topic because people are asking about it a lot. And that really lent itself towards exploring more of a role in working with developers, either in like developer relations or community. And when it was time for me to kind of take my next step, that's the types of roles that I looked for actually was speaking at a virtual conference because a lot of this was during the height of the pandemic. And Sam Julian, who writes a lot about developer relations and has worked a lot in developer relations roles. He and I were chatting virtually backstage and he was like, wow, like, you know you're doing that, right? He's like, you're. It sounds like you're doing developer relations and kind of put that idea in my head and it was been something that I've really loved doing ever since.

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Hayden Baillio:

So yeah, it seems like it. I mean you're. Your past three roles have all been in that space, right? Developer advocacy or in community. Right. I want to dive deeper into that. On, you know, you seem to have basically taken what I would assume is most people's like journey into developer advocacy, which is you started out as a developer working on this stuff and then you went to a meetup or you gave a talk and then it slowly built into maybe another talk. And then you started to like take those things that you really loved about that and started to incorporate them into your day job. And then all of a sudden there was this mesh and then all of a sudden it was like, this is what I want to do.

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Hayden Baillio:

And now you had this like thing. I do feel like I come across some people that kind of just want to go straight into developer advocacy. Right. And I feel like the journey kind of has to be start in the position that you're going to be like advocating for so that you can better understand that position. But I'd love to know your thoughts on like if there was somebody right now even just coming straight out of college or the Georgia Institute, whatever that looks like. Right. They're coming straight out of the program that they're in or the college and they're like, hey, this looks so much like so much fun. I want to be in developer advocacy.

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Hayden Baillio:

What would be some thoughts or advice you would give to an individual like that or a younger version of yourself?

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Yeah, it's been really interesting to see how the field has changed because I think that's something where I think a lot of people have that journey and that transition because a lot of companies weren't necessarily hiring for that role or even had that role for a long time. And then as developer tools, open source, product led growth became bigger and bigger as like an industry, then the developers became more important and then relating to them, advocating for them also became more important from a business perspective as well. And so that's why you start to see these really dedicated teams and roles. And I think that's also what makes it more attractive because it's a job that you can do and it's not necessarily something that fits into a different function. And so it's been interesting to see that progression and the idea of people kind of stepping directly into that type of role. And I think another thing that complicates it is the fact that developer advocacy and developer relations is super multifaceted. It can mean like a ton of different things, right? And so if you have one company that thinks that developer relations is like making funny tech videos to like get a lot of people to follow your accounts, then I mean, yeah, maybe somebody could do that, right? Somebody who can like learn enough about tech and make great videos and that's the only thing they have to do, then maybe that would make sense. Or maybe if it's something where all they have to do is speak at conferences and they're like a really good speaker and they don't have to do anything else, then maybe they see those parts of it.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

But in my experience, developer advocacy and that role specifically is about understanding and advocating for the developers that are using your product so that they can be the most successful, they can do their job well and you're serving them and providing value for them. And that's really, really hard to do if you, if you can't empathize with them, if you can't understand like their workflows, what they do on a day to day basis, what's going to help them be successful. And I think that's why we're starting to see more people who want to go directly into it, because they see the outward facing parts of it. They don't see the hanging out in your support forums and your slacks and responding to like a lot of the same questions or finding an issue and trying to reproduce it and then figure out what's going wrong with it. Taking all the feedback and deciding what's best for the community versus what you have to kind of throw out. Because the thing, especially when you're working with open source developer tools, you are beholden to the entire community. You're not beholden to one user, you're not beholden to one customer. You have to make decisions about the product in the community that will impact everybody.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

And a lot of that does require understanding what developers go through and also some of the technical challenges specifically. So I think it just, we're seeing a fragmentation of what developer advocacy is and people like to do the fun stuff. And so do I. Like it's fun, but I think it can be more valuable and more rewarding when you also do the hard stuff too. And that does require, I think, that experience or time in the seat, as they say.

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Hayden Baillio:

Yeah, I think you hit on a pretty important point though. Like, what is the actual definition of the role itself? Like, what is the definition of developer relations or developer advocacy? And I don't even know if that's really been defined, because you're right, it can be as much as you have the influencer on X and Blue sky and making YouTube videos, it can be the person speaking at conferences, or it can be the person that's just deep in the community making things happen. And you're like, they're all impactful in their own ways. But I think all of it is rooted in community, regardless of what you're doing. It's like, hopefully you're making funny videos for community. I want to switch gears now and say, recently you've been talking a lot about AI and DevOps. Tell me a little bit about your train of thought and these talks that you've been giving at the, you know, at ATO last year and coming up with Dev nexus around AI and DevOps, like, give us the abstract, give us the short form.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Yeah, I think obviously, you know, AI has been a huge topic over the past few years, but I think last year we really started to kind of hit a peak with how many different people were talking about it. And what I've seen is that the coding, software engineering part of that, the applications, whether it's AI being used to actually generate code to help you develop an application, or like AI being integrated into applications, gets a lot of the attention. So using things like Copilot or building things like agents gets a lot of the lot of content, a lot of resources, a lot of talks are about those applications. But there's this interesting idea that if you are generating more code and building the application parts more quickly, then the rest of the software development lifecycle can't really keep up. And so are there opportunities to actually implement AI in other parts of the software development lifecycle, not just the development part, in order to be more efficient and optimized? And then also what are the potential risks and pros and cons of that? And so I think it's a pretty interesting question and one that a lot of people are working on. And I think there's a lot of interesting things happening in those spaces, whether it's around testing, monitoring, using AI for deployments and infrastructure resources. And so I think it's something that is, I'd like to draw more attention to because I think that there's a lot of good applications and potential efficiencies that you can use there as well, and not just on the chatgpt. Generate me an app kind of a thing.

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Hayden Baillio:

Yeah. Well, tell me one of your favorite AI tools right now that is helping developers in a unique way.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Yeah, so, I mean, one of the areas that I thought was particularly interesting, you know, kind of working in testing for so long, coming from a testing background, was the idea of synthetic AI driven test data generation. So it's something that it's. You're used to actually using a model based where you use AI in order to scrub your application and determine what type of test data would make the most sense based on your code. If, for example, you have a healthcare app and you need users that have specific conditions or you need to know their blood type, it'll actually generate test data based on that. Because I don't know people who have struggled with this before. I know I have. Is keeping test data up to date and making sure that it always matches up what you need for your application. And there's this concept of instead of having to maintain, you retrain.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

And so you would just essentially retrain your model based on any updates to your application rather than having to manually update that. I think that overall concept of retrain, not maintain, has a ton of applications. When you think about things like changes to your YAML configurations for your infrastructure requirements and, you know, being able to just update a model instead and have that happen automatically versus manually, those are the areas where I think we could see some real efficiency gains with AI. And a lot of it is still very early stage, but I think it's really interesting and hopefully more people can dedicate resources to that once they know more about it.

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Hayden Baillio:

I love that. Yeah, I completely agree. So where do you see. Give me your little crystal ball prediction. It's hard to even predict five years from now when it comes to AI because things are moving so fast. But let's talk about you then. Where do you see yourself in five years? What path would you like to be on in five years?

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Yeah, so it's interesting, I think of AI as kind of like for previous generation, like the Internet. Right. So before the Internet, knowledge was about being able to retain information, having learning skills, and then using those skills. Once the Internet came along, you all of a sudden had access to all of the knowledge that you needed. Right. So you didn't have to memorize things, you could look them up, you could figure out how to do something by researching it at a specific time versus in advance. And the Internet essentially ended up opening up new Things that we couldn't have fathomed at the time. And I think AI is going to be a little bit like that as well.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

I think we're starting to see roles like AI engineer in addition to the more traditional AI, like machine learning scientists, data based roles. And I think that we're in a part where we're not going to necessarily know what types of roles need to exist in about five years. But for me, the most rewarding parts of what I do, no matter what it is, whether it's been in journalism or finance or engineering or developer relations, is I love solving problems. You know, there's a reason I like puzzles so much and I like helping people. And I know it's like pretty cliched probably to say, oh, I like solving problems and I like helping people. So as long as I'm doing that, like, I'll probably be happy. But it's true. And I think that developers are such a great group of people to work with because they're, I mean, they're a lot like me, number one.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

They also like solving problems and hopefully helping people as well. But I think it's just because of that multiplication factor and the amplification factor of if I'm working with developers and helping them do cool things, then I feel like I'm also doing cool things in the world too. And so I'd like to be able to continue that type of work even if the technical specifics change or the APIs and interfaces that I work with change. Hopefully that core is always there.

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Hayden Baillio:

Awesome. I feel like we have. We've started at the beginning. Celia, right? Where are you from? Where you serve time? We've made it to your first career stints in journalism and then finance. You've now moved into the tech space and now we've even talked about where you want to be in the future. So we've covered a lot of jobs. So I think it's time to bring us to our final game of the show.

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Wendy Hurst:

Final game of the show. It's called Connections. I'm just kidding. It's not really connections.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

You're gonna see how bad I make. Connections.

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Wendy Hurst:

It's called not my job. We will ask you three questions that have nothing to do with your job in the real world or anything we've talked about today and everything to do with what you know about ancient food preservation techniques.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Okay.

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Wendy Hurst:

Are you ready?

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

As ready as I'll ever be.

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Wendy Hurst:

Okay. Number one, how did ancient Egyptians preserve meat for long journeys? Was it a. They coated it in honey and wrapped it in papyrus. B, they soaked it in beer and buried it in the sand or sea. They salted it heavily and dried it in the sun.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

See, this is going to sound weird, but I know that they did use honey to preserve bodies, so I'm guessing it's more the salt thing for the food.

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Wendy Hurst:

Good guess. That's the answer. They salted it heavily and dried it in the sun to dehydrate and preserve the meat, which made it last longer in their arid climate.

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Hayden Baillio:

Can I just point out that Cecilia.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Guessed about how I know about the honey body?

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Hayden Baillio:

Yeah, I just want to point out that she guessed about how they preserve their food, but definitely knew how they preserve their dead bodies.

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Wendy Hurst:

Yes, yes.

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Hayden Baillio:

There you go. There you go. That's fair.

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Wendy Hurst:

Question number two. What was the primary method the Viking used to preserve a fish? Was it, A, they froze it in blocks of ice, B, they buried it in the ground to ferment, or C, they smoked it over a fire?

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Okay, I know that in Iceland they have that fish dish where you bury it in the ground and it's, like, called, like, a coral or something. I didn't eat it because it sounded really gross, but I think it's the fermented in the ground thing. Correct.

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Wendy Hurst:

They buried it in the ground. They often buried fish. They often buried fish like shark to ferment it, creating a preserved dish known as hakarl, which is still eaten in Iceland today.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

This is like my Slumdock millionaire.

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Wendy Hurst:

I am amazed.

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Hayden Baillio:

Incredible. I love that. What a very unique, like, experience in your life that then directed you to this podcast that allowed you to answer that question. I love it. Love it.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Yes.

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Wendy Hurst:

It's paying off. Your experience is paying off. Question number three. How did the Chinese preserve eggs during the Ming dynasty? Was it, A, by coating them in clay, ash, and salt, B, by boiling them in vinegar nut honey, or C, by freezing them in ice from mountaintops?

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Okay, I know there's a little thing called, like. It's a balut egg, right? It's like the little dark egg. I think it's the clay ash thing.

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Wendy Hurst:

That is correct.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Yes.

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Wendy Hurst:

Known as century eggs or preserved eggs, this method allows eggs to ferment and develop their distinct flavor and dark appearance over weeks or months. I'm amazed.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Three for three.

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Hayden Baillio:

Amazing. Amazing.

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Wendy Hurst:

I have a bonus question.

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Hayden Baillio:

Do the bonus. Because she needs to get one wrong.

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Wendy Hurst:

If you're up for a. For a fourth one.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Yes. Let's see.

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Wendy Hurst:

Just because it's fun and I think she's gonna get it right. Okay, here we go. Question Number four, what preservation technique did the ancient Romans use to make their food last longer? A, they stored it in olive oil, B, they submerged it in seawater, or C, they froze it in mountain caves.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

I feel like olive oil might be too obvious, but I'm gonna pick that one.

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Wendy Hurst:

The answer is A, they olive oil.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

It's like, obviously. No, like, that's too easy. It's a trick question. Like, obviously it's olive oil.

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Wendy Hurst:

Romans preserved various foods like vegetables and meats by submerging them in olive oil, which kept out air and bacteria.

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Hayden Baillio:

Wow.

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Wendy Hurst:

Well done, Cecilia.

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Hayden Baillio:

Well done. Oh, my God. Yeah, well done. I have a. Just a follow up. It's the last question that I ask everybody. This has nothing to do with ancient food preservation techniques at all. This absolutely has to do every with.

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Hayden Baillio:

There are a lot of amazing maintainers, contributors, organizers of open source out there that just do a lot of work for a little bit of recognition and very little monetary compensation. It's just, it's the passion projects. Right. So if you had one message you could send via GitHub or get in general to every single one of them that contained only one word, what would that word be?

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Oh, can it be the Heart Hands emoji?

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Hayden Baillio:

It absolutely can be an emoji. I love that.

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Wendy Hurst:

Yes.

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Hayden Baillio:

Yeah, it's a perfect one. As long as you do it like a millennial and not like a weird Gen Z or whatever, however you do it.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

No, like the literal. Like it's this one and this is. They have the emoji now Right. Where it's the Heart hands. Yeah. I've also seen people do like this now. Yeah, yeah. But no, something that always impresses me too, is, you know, having worked at open source companies is people who, like, leave the company but still work on the project.

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Like, I love. I just think it's like, shows the passion that they have for the community and that it's not just. Oh, it's not just a job, it's. They really love what they do and they believe in it. And I think that's, like, so cool and so inspirational.

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Hayden Baillio:

It is. I agree. And we're coming up on time and. But I wanted to. I didn't want to gloss over all the groups that you, like, have a hand in, in Atlanta. And so my last kind of question before we kind of wrap everything up is where can people find you online and follow your personal stuff with you, you know, or connect with you at somehow? Where can they find you online?

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Cecelia Martinez McCrea:

Yeah. So Cecilia creates is my handle on, like, pretty much everything also celiacreates.com is my website where you can find links to everything else and it's also where you can find links to Atlanta, JavaScript and also out in tech. If you are ever in the Atlanta area and would like to speak at any of our events. We love having people come share their technical expertise with our community.

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Hayden Baillio:

So awesome. That was going to be my follow up is how can people get involved in the Atlanta tech space. So thank you for answering that already. Cecilia, this has been amazing. I have learned so much about you. I had a lot of fun talking to you. Thank you. Wendy, thank you for watching or listening at home, probably doing your laundry, maybe folding your clothes for once because I know they're just on the floor, on your bed or on a chair, right? So hold your clothes and very thankful for everybody who's been who's been downloading the episodes and watching.

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Hayden Baillio:

Please share it with a friend. If you found something insightful, just share with another friend in the tech space or that wants to be in the tech space that might get a nugget from Cecilia here. And by all means, keep being the heroes of your tech world. I appreciate every one of you. Bye y'all. Peace.