How are you guys doing? Good? Okay, one person's good, that's fine. I'll go with that. I'm going to hopefully help you become a social developer. This is one of the things that has been very important to me in my career,

but it's something I learned very late in my career as well. And that describes actually pretty much every talk that I do. It's stuff that was difficult for me to learn or took a long time for me to learn, but became very, very important to me. So this is one of those things, because as developers we need to talk to each other.

Now, when I talk about becoming a social developer, I'm not talking about interacting with people on Facebook, I'm talking about talking to developers in person, especially when we're at awesome events just like this one. Now, I know some of you are, you're probably a little apprehensive right now,

because you're thinking, oh man, he's going to make us talk to each other. But don't worry, because this is not a highly interactive workshop. Okay, so for those of you who are a little nervous, that's okay. This is not a highly interactive workshop.

So even the people that are down here in the front row near the door, they're going to be okay too. You know, the people in the back, you guys are kind of stuck with me. And the reason is, I want this to be a nice, comfortable, safe space. Because a lot of us are shy, a lot of us kind of have these behaviors that we're used to, and we're not comfortable interacting with other people.

And quite honestly, I'm like that too. But I've learned how to change my behavior over the years. And what I've found is that when I've started talking to other developers, when I've started meeting new people, when I've just had a chance to interact with people that are doing things that I'm not doing with,

there's a ton of benefits that I've gotten from this. I get to talk to people who are working with technologies I'm not working in. I get to find out what they're good for, what they're not so good at. I get new ideas of people who are solving problems in ways that I never would have thought of. And this is especially important because a lot of times, you know, we get kind of hooked in our work teams, you know,

so maybe there's this group of people that we interact with all the time. We're all working on the same problem. Once we start getting outside of that world, we find out how people are approaching things different ways, and that gives us new ideas and new challenges of how we can go through and actually make those, bring some of those ideas into our own development world.

And of course, over the years, I've made a ton of new friends. And I'm not a social person by nature. And for some reason, I know a lot of people now. I know way more people than I feel like I should know. But again, it's been really, really awesome for me.

Now, you see me up here on the stage and you're like, well, Jeremy, you look pretty confident. You look like you're not afraid to talk to people. And yes, I do look that way. But the reality of the situation is I am just like you. I'm one of those people who was the loner at the conference.

I don't know if you've ever, you know, growing up shy, it's just, it's painful, it's horrible. And I don't know if you've ever had this kind of situation, but I did this all the time. Whenever the teacher would call roll in class, I'd be waiting for my name to get called.

You know, it's like, okay, do I say here? Do I say present? Is my throat clear? Am I gonna choke on it? You know, it's just like, why am I so nervous about this? This is not something I should be nervous about. But it's just because of the behavior of growing up as a shy person and, you know, that kind of leaks into the rest of the world too.

Now, I was one of those really lucky people. When I was a young developer, the team that I worked on, my management, they totally believed in training and conferences. So they would send me to conferences all the time. And it was awesome because I learned a lot of stuff. Every presentation I went to, I learned something new.

And even if it was something I couldn't use right away, it gets filed in the back of my mind for me to use it later. But breaks and mealtimes were horrible. They're horrible because there's all these people all around me. People I don't know. And what do I do? I freeze up, right? And you don't want to just, like, stand in the corner

because that makes you look pretty sad and pathetic. And we know we're sad and pathetic, but we don't want to feel that way. So, of course, what we do instead is we pull out our magic device. Right? And I would do this. I would pull out my magic device, and I would love to say it's this device here, which is the one I carry today. But in reality, this was many years ago,

and so this is the magic device that I was carrying back then. I won't ask who's old enough to remember those because you probably have arthritis from that scroll wheel. Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. That was awesome, though. I love the scroll wheel with the click. It's great to know that Apple brought that back with the Apple Watch, so you've got the little scroll wheel with the click.

It's awesome. So this is the device that I used. And the thing was, as soon as I pulled this device out, I had a force field around me. Right? Because now it looks like I'm doing something productive because we're all professionals in the industry. So, of course, we're constantly getting paged on stuff

because our work doesn't stop just because we're somewhere else. And so, obviously, if I'm going like this, there must be something on fire at work. Right? And I better take care of it now. So it looks like I'm doing something busy and productive, so I don't just have to stand there and look sad and pathetic, which is the way that I actually feel.

And I don't want to talk about how many conferences I went through where this was me. And I look back at it now with all of my experiences of talking to new people, and what I found out is that talking to the other people at the conferences

is almost as awesome as all of the good presentations that are there. Sometimes it's more awesome. Depends on the conference. But I didn't realize how much I was missing back then when I was putting up my force field. The other thing that was just horrible was the terror at meal times.

Now, this event is actually kind of cool because they just kind of feed us all day, so we don't have to worry about this. But, man, you walk into the banquet room, and there's just all these tables, right? And you see all these tables, and you're like, oh, where do I go and sit, right? And, of course, I would go sit by myself,

but that looks sad and pathetic, right? So I don't want to go sit by myself. So I try to come up with some other way of joining a conversation. And so there's times where I go in and kind of look at the banquet room, kind of scan the room, see who's already in there. And I'd see this group of people sitting at this table

having this really great conversation, and I'm like, you know what? I'm going to go up and sit at their table. They're already talking, so there's no pressure on me to talk, and I can just kind of listen and join in the conversation once I have something really witty to say, right? But then I go and sit down. I find out they're all from the same company,

and all they're talking about is how Jack never makes coffee after the coffee pot's empty, right? So it's not a conversation that's useful to me. It's not a conversation I can join in on. And I've done that many times at these various conferences. The other times, you know, there's been times where I've gone,

and it's like, oh, there's a table with two people sitting there and having a conversation. I can go up and just kind of sit and listen to the conversation that's already going on. And I've actually done this, and the people sitting at the table were talking in Swedish, which there's nothing wrong with Swedish.

Any Swedish people in the audience? Okay, cool. I'm only going to offend about five people then. But what I found out is that as an American, who of course only knows English because that's the way we are, I found out that my childhood did not prepare me to interact with Swedish people as much as I thought it did.

And apparently if you talk like the Swedish chef, it's highly offensive. So the thing is, you know, another conversation I couldn't join in on. And after you sit down at the table, if you find out it's a conversation and you can't join in, you can't just pick up your plate and go somewhere else, right? Because now that just seems rude.

So you're kind of stuck with whatever situation you start out with. And just to prove that there's nothing wrong with Swedish people, this guy's my friend. I have a Swedish friend who, he's actually speaking right now in another one of the theaters.

So yeah, Philip Ekberg. I'm looking forward to talking to him. I get to see him like once a year. So I actually get to see him this week, which is cool. So the thing is, having to go through this mealtime terror and just kind of putting up my force field whenever anything was happening, it was stressful.

And it was stressful just because I didn't want to do the interactions. And again, I really didn't think that I was missing out on much. I wouldn't say that I was comfortable with who I am, but I'm an introvert, right? And introverts are supposed to be that way, right?

No, they're not. Because when people talk about introverts and extroverts, a lot of times they say, you know what? Introverts are shy, and extroverts are outgoing. And that's a manifestation of behavior, but that has nothing to do with what being an introvert or an extrovert actually means.

These are just behaviors that come out of that. What it means if we're an introvert or an extrovert, it has to do with where we derive our energy from. When we're talking about introverts, we derive our energy internally. And so we're comfortable being by ourselves, having lunch with a book,

having coffee with a couple of friends. And that's actually energizing to us. And because of that, our industry as developers attracts introverts. Why? Because we're talking to the computer all day. We're solving problems all day. We're not interacting with people. So having that internal energy, it's just great for our environment,

if I'm going to sit down and problem-solve in front of my computer all day. Now, extroverts derive their energy externally from things going on outside of them. So they like a lot of activity. They like a lot of people around them.

And they find actually sitting down and doing nothing, like an introvert would love, to be boring. And it's actually draining. And that's what we really need to understand. Now, the behaviors that we have come out of this. Because obviously, if we're comfortable being internal and kind of by ourselves,

we're not going to develop those social skills that make us comfortable interacting with strangers. And that's okay. But we can change that. And so, just because we think about introverts and extroverts as shy and outgoing, doesn't mean that that's the way that we have to behave. And in fact, I was in, this is a spot that's in Florida,

in the southern US. And this is a place that extroverts would love. This is just heaven for extroverts. There's all this activity going on. There's all this, you can't hear the music, but there's a bunch of music.

There's a bunch of noise. There's a bunch of people. There's a bunch of stuff going on. And this is awesome. Extroverts love that. Now, me as an introvert, this was hell for me. Because I'm just like, Okay, okay, make it stop. Because again, this is draining.

And so, basically, if we can recognize that, we know that we're in certain situations, sometimes we need to step out and take a few minutes to reset. And in fact, I do that a lot, especially at events like this, where I do interact with people, because I want to. I want to take advantage of the situation. So, I kind of spent my life up to a certain point,

which is approximately six years ago. I won't tell you how old I am, but you can probably figure out that I'm two-thirds Greybeard. So, that puts me into a certain class of age. So, six years ago really isn't that long ago, as far as my life is concerned. And I made this observation that changed everything for me.

And I'm going to pause on that, so you can think about how important that is. Okay, that's enough. So, I was at a code camp, which is a developer event,

and I actually live in Southern California, which is nine time zones away from here. And it was at this big, beautiful university campus. And at lunchtime, again, lunchtime, stressful at those types of events, there was this big, grassy quad. And it was awesome, because I got in line,

I got my tacos, and I went out and looked at this big, grassy quad, and I saw developers just kind of scattered across the lawn by themselves, everybody sitting there eating by themselves. And I felt like, you know what, I think that I could graph this and plot a uniform distribution

based on the way people are sitting on the grass. I mean, that's how I felt. And you know what, quite honestly, that was my first inclination, too. Because, again, that's my default state. My default state is, let's go find a quiet spot to sit down and have lunch. But for whatever reason, I still don't know why.

I think I looked at this scene, and I just found it kind of humorous. I'm like, here's hundreds of people, all in the same place, just sitting, not talking to each other. And so I said, you know what, I'm going to try something different. And so I found someone who was sitting by themselves,

and they really were enjoying their tacos. And I just went up to them, and I said, do you mind if I join you? Now, I wasn't quite this enthusiastic. It was more like this. And what I found over the years

is people don't like to be rude. So most of the time, if you say, do you mind if I join you, they'll say, no, I don't mind. Because what are they going to say? I don't like the way you look. So most of the time, people will say yes. I'm trying to think if anyone's ever said no to me.

I'm sure it will happen soon if it hasn't already. And so sitting down, having a conversation with just one person, that's not really a big deal. But what happened next is what made things really, really interesting. Because I sat down, I said, hey, I'm Jeremy.

So what do you do? And he's like, oh, there's a funny story about that. Let me tell you about it. And we started talking. And people came up and joined us. First one person came up, they sat down, they listened to the conversation for a little while. Then another person came up and another person and another person.

And slowly, they would come up, they would sit down, they would listen, and then they would join the conversation. And by the time this lunch was over, there were two circles that had formed around us. I wasn't even looking at the person I originally sat down with

because our conversation attracted more people to it. And thinking about that later, I'm like, wow, that was really cool. So instead of these 12 people, actually, I think I have 14 people up there. Instead of these 14 people sitting on their own having lunch,

now we're all engaged in conversation. We're learning from each other. And so I started thinking about, you know, so what's going on here? And that's when I had my realization, my light bulb moment. And that realization was developers love to talk.

They love to talk. They will talk all day long. But, and there is a very big but to this, they don't like to start the conversation. And I've seen this over and over and over again.

Developers love to talk. And why is that? Well, it's because you get two developers together and they're going to start talking about all of these nerdy geeky stuff that they cannot talk about with anybody else. It's like my significant other doesn't understand any of this. My cat doesn't care.

Hey, look, I found someone who cares about this. Let's talk. And that's the way it is. We'd love to talk. We just don't like to start the conversation. And so I started thinking about, well, why is that? Why is there this problem of people who just love to interact but just won't do it?

And again, the problem is it's that initial fear. Because we all have fear. That's the what if. What if there's an earthquake? What if a plane crashes while I'm doing this? And it's not always rational fear. But in this case, when we're talking about interacting with people,

there's definitely a fear of the unknown because, again, as an introvert, I've exhibited shy behavior over the years. This is what I'm used to. This is what I'm comfortable with. And I'm not exactly sure what's going to happen when I start to step outside of those things that I know when I'm comfortable with.

There's also fear of rejection. Now, I did say most people are polite, and that's true. But there's always that fear that maybe this person's going to think there's something wrong with me, right? If I don't talk to them, they won't think that there's something wrong with me. If I do talk to them, there's a possibility that they will.

And then, of course, there's a fear of failure as well. I'm putting myself out there. I'm taking a risk. What happens if that risk comes up bad? Right? And so these are the things that really hold us back. And I'm not going to say that this ever goes away 100%

because I don't really like to lie to people because, quite honestly, I still have this fear that people are just going to say, hey, that Jeremy guy, he's kind of a doofus, isn't he? Yeah, what a dork. Now, the difference is that I think I'm old enough now that I just don't care about that anymore.

I'm fine with being a dork. I'm fine with not being perfect. I'm fine with people thinking that I'm a little weird. Hopefully not too weird, but a little weird is fine. So these are the things that really hold us back.

Now, I have kind of continued that observation since that first lunch, and I've seen this over and over again, whether I'm at a user group, maybe a local meetup, maybe at a big conference, maybe at a regional event. This is actually a photo that was taken at a local code camp, and I guess it's okay for me to use because I stole it off of their website, and it has me in it,

so I'm using it. But this is just kind of the quad area before the event was starting one day, and you can see there's a lot of conversations going on there. And kind of what I've seen over and over again when I'm part of an active conversation, which is very common for me now,

is that there'll be a developer who comes up and kind of spots a conversation that's happening. And of course, we're human, so we want to be involved in a conversation. It's just, you know, we want to be social. That's just kind of part of who we are as people. We're social creatures. And so we'll spot this conversation going on,

and they're like, maybe I can sneak up and join that. And so you kind of creep up to the circle, and you enter the listening phase, where you're just listening to the conversation that's going on. Now again, we're still fearful. We still don't know if these people are going to accept us or reject us,

but right now we don't have much invested in it. It's one of those things. It's like the people that are down here in the front row next to the door, if they need to leave, they can. Whereas these people back in the back corner, it's tough for you guys to get out of the room. So there's not much invested at this point. So we enter that listening phase. Okay, can I follow along with this conversation?

Are they talking about something that maybe I have something to add? And then the next step is that we'll put out some kind of an exploratory comment just to see if we're going to be accepted by the group. Maybe it's commenting on someone was talking about an XKCD comic that they saw the other day.

And of course, we all read XKCD, and if you don't, you should, because it's a little too much like real life. So we'll put out that exploratory comment to see if we're going to be accepted by the group. And if we say something really weird and we get that look like, then we know we're probably not, and yes, let's go ahead and step away,

but we haven't risked too much yet. But if we are accepted, then we become a full part of the conversation. And I have just seen this happen over and over and over again. I've watched developers go through this process. Now, you've probably noticed that I've been saying developers rather than introverts, and there are extrovert developers out there.

But again, because of the nature of our industry, it attracts introverts. So kind of the stereotype of the introvert developer, yeah, that's pretty true. So when we become the full part of the conversation, now we're part of the group, and that's really cool stuff.

And so this is what I've seen over and over again. So I've been thinking about, okay, so people have this fear, people love to talk, and people kind of go through this process of trying to join an existing conversation. How do we just start a conversation

when there isn't one going? And that's where things get really easy and really hard. Because at this point, I'm going to tell you, starting a conversation from a technical standpoint is the simplest thing in the world.

It's the simplest thing in the world. But it's also completely and totally terrifying. Completely and totally terrifying. And that doesn't ever 100% go away either, because we all have those fears. So let me show you the three simple steps

that I do to get a conversation started. And this actually works more times than it should. Step number one is I go up to somebody and I say, I'm Jeremy. Hi, how are you doing? And again, I kind of rely on the politeness of people, and so usually they'll respond with their name,

tell me who they are. If they don't say anything at all, OK, maybe I won't continue the conversation. But again, most people are polite and they don't want to be seen as rude, so they'll respond. And then the next question is, so, what do you do? And I would say probably about six times out of ten,

the response to this question is, I'm a developer. I'm like, OK, yes, we are at a developer event. I kind of figure there's a pretty good chance of that. Could you be more specific? And I'll actually move on to ask, what kind of technologies are you working with?

What are the things that make you excited? What works well? What doesn't work well? Hey, you're working on something that I'm not working with. Tell me about it. I want to know all about this stuff. And with those three simple steps, man, I have started so many conversations. So many conversations.

So many conversations that I'm amazed that it even works. Because, again, that's not me. That's not my nature. And again, I try to think, yes, I am a shy person, but that's because I spent many decades of my life

acting like a shy person. But because I'm an introvert, that doesn't mean that I have to be shy. Because shyness is a behavior, and behavior can be changed. And that's really what I've focused on. Behavior can be changed. Now, I'm not going to change the fact that I'm an introvert. I will always be an introvert, and I'm fine with that.

And I want to try to learn more about it so that I can take full advantage of that. But that also means that in going through that process, I try to figure out, OK, what do I have to do to make sure that I keep my energy up while I'm still interacting with people? So that shyness can be changed. And when you start doing this,

it is terrifying. Completely and totally terrifying. For some people, it's debilitating. And for me, it's actually pretty close to debilitating. Just because, again, that's the way that I've spent most of my life. But the thing is, it gets easier. Because each time we have a successful conversation,

each time we make a connection with another person, that's now positive feedback in my world. Because, quite honestly, if I had tried this and failed five times out of ten, I would have given up on it a long, long time ago. Because I am not someone who takes failure easily.

And I would have said, you know what? This totally isn't worth it. It works half the time. Forget that. But what I found is that it works like nine times out of ten. That means if I go around, I'm at an event like this, I try to start ten conversations, nine of them actually go somewhere. And that tenth one that doesn't go anywhere fizzles out.

That's not a big deal to me anymore. Because I've had nine successes. When I have a 90% success rate, that's awesome. The other thing that makes it easier is I only do this at developer events. I don't talk to people at the airport.

I don't talk to people at the bank. I don't talk to people at the supermarket. I only do this at developer events. And one reason is because it's easier to do this at developer events. Because I can guarantee that if we look at everybody who's here, we all have at least two things in common.

First, we love technology. Second, we want to learn. So everybody that's here, the hundreds and hundreds of people that are here, we all have these two things in common. So we have a starting point for a conversation. And that's what makes it easy.

Because, again, developers love to talk about technology once you get them started. So if you're here, it's like, hey, so what cool stuff have you seen so far? Hey, you know what? This morning, Jeremy did this awesome presentation on how to become a social developer. Let me tell you about it. I'm hoping you guys will do that today.

You guys don't sound too hopeful. Fine. Well, you don't seem convinced yet. So let me tell you about the benefits that I've come across. And again, these are benefits that I've seen personally. This isn't stuff that I'm making up. This isn't stuff that I'm reading in a book.

In fact, I have done as little research as is possible on this subject. All of this is just based on my observations and interacting with people over about six years of time. And I've seen it so many times that I'm pretty convinced that this is real.

And maybe I should talk to a real person who's actually studied it and they can tell me where I'm wrong. So that's something that I'll have to look into in the future. But for now, I try to think about the benefits because a big one is the technologies that we can interact with.

Because especially when we're at events like this, it's really easy to feel inadequate because realistically, I can know this much of the technology that's out there. There's just too much to learn. We can't learn at all. And it's really easy to look out there, especially if there's maybe someone you follow on Twitter.

It's like, man, this guy's always tweeting really cool stuff about this particular topic. He must just be really a genius. Or you know what? This woman, I can't believe what she does with document databases. She's just a genius in this area. She must just be a genius in everything. But the reality is we're not all geniuses in everything.

We know our little bit of technology. And some of us go wide and some of us go deep and it's all kind of a little bit different. But each time I talk to somebody new, I can interact with someone who's working with different technologies that I'm working with. Maybe they're working with the same technologies that I'm working with,

but they're using them in different ways. And what I find is that the more people I talk to, the more touch points I get into the various worlds of technology. And I never come across that one person who knows everything because that person doesn't exist. You look at the speakers that are talking this week, they don't know everything. As a speaker, I will be glad to admit that.

And I know the other speakers, so I can feel free to talk for them too. So the thing is, each time we talk to somebody, now I get a touch point into this area. For example, I am totally not in the JavaScript world. That's just not my world. But I know people who are in the JavaScript world,

so that I know that if I have a problem come up and I'm like, you know what? I remember I was hearing Matt talk something about this. I should really ask him if this is the right tool for the particular scenario that I just ran across. Or, you know what? I don't do any mobile development at all. I don't do native, I don't do hybrid,

I don't do web apps. I've seen enough of them to know kind of what they are, but if I have a problem come up, I know the guy to call. I'm going to call up my buddy Troy and say, hey Troy, Mr. Mobile, let me run something by you, see what you think. So because I have all of these contacts,

I don't have to know everything. Which is really a relief, because I can't know everything. So it's great because I have all of these people that I can talk to, to just figure out, hey, what's the right tool for the job? Because I'm all about the right tool for the job.

So I have a challenge for you. Now, at the beginning I said this is not a highly interactive workshop. That was not a lie. But I want the rest of the conference

to be highly interactive for you. So this is my challenge. And I did my challenge in the form of code because I wanted to keep your interest as developers. So of course, we've already kicked off this method, attend NDC Oslo, and we want to maximize the amount of awesome we get returned from this.

So here's what I'm going to do. First of all, since we're in Norway, we're going to have some Jumperflot, is that right? How close was I? Way far away. Jumperflot. Closer? Worse?

This is why I speak English badly. Thank you. So we want to maximize the amount of awesome that we have. And so really what I want you to do is I want you to meet someone new. Because every time we have a successful interaction with somebody, our awesome increases. And if you do that over and over and over this week, you're going to find out that, you know what?

There's a whole bunch of awesome that we're getting from the presentations, but there's a whole bunch more awesome that we can get from the people that are here. There are a lot of people here. And there are a lot of people here with different experiences. And quite honestly, I would expect there's at least one person here who can completely change your life.

I don't expect that you'll necessarily find them, but it's worth a try. So throughout this week, I want you to go through and try to meet as many people as possible. Talk to them. Start those conversations. Get the benefits out of them.

Now, I do have some tips for you that will hopefully make some of this easier. The first tip is turn off your force field. When you're in between sessions, yeah, of course we have to check our device to make sure that nothing's on fire back home, right? Make sure that our bosses are happy and everything.

But as soon as you've verified that, put your device away. Turn off your force field. Because quite honestly, if you have your force field on, nobody's going to come up and talk to you. But without your force field on, even if you're looking sad and pathetic, there's a chance that someone will come up and talk to you, and you can actually have a good conversation. And in fact, I wear this shirt intentionally

to try to start conversations. It's worked a couple times. I love this shirt. Just shy, not antisocial, you can talk to me. And if you'd like to get one of these, this is actually from the XKCD store. I ran across it completely by accident one day. And I'm like, that is the perfect shirt for me. So, number one thing you can do,

turn off your force field. People will not approach you if you have, and man, if you've got a laptop open, this is like an invisibility cloak, right? Because now you really look like you're doing something important, right? And not just playing, oh, I'm skipping ahead, apparently.

And it looks like we're doing something really important and not just playing, what's the latest, Goat Simulator, the one Goats in Space. So, yeah, that's what I do. So, that's one thing we can do. The next thing is skip ahead. Not necessarily skip ahead yourself, but help other people skip ahead

in the progression that we talked about earlier. So, we have this progression where, let's say we are part of a conversation already, and someone does approach our circle, and they kind of go into that listening phase, and they're just kind of waiting for that spot to inject their witty comments so that they can see if they'll be accepted and they can join our circle.

Don't make them go through that. As soon as someone comes up to join your circle, if you have a circle going, welcome them. Say, hey, I'm Jeremy. Here's my friends. Who are you? What do you want? No, not like that. Just introduce yourself, make them feel welcome.

And in fact, I'm going to go back to this picture because this picture is one where I was specifically doing that. Now, first of all, in this picture, I look monstrously tall in this picture. I guess I am monstrously tall, but I really look monstrously tall in this picture. And I actually remember this

because I was having a conversation with some friends of mine, Justin and Bill, and this third guy came up and kind of crept up to the circle. And as soon as he got close enough, I said, hey, I'm Jeremy. This is Justin. This is Bill. How you doing? And I actually got him involved in the conversation.

So I talk about, comedically, like grabbing someone by the lapels and dragging them into the conversation, but in a nice way, just make people feel welcome. So we can help people skip ahead and get through that progression problem.

And I actually do have some tips for solving the terror at mealtimes. Again, we don't really have that problem as much here at this conference since we just have all this awesome food all day, which is really great. Let's go sample some stuff in the meantime. But there's a couple things that we can do. First of all, recognize your captive audience.

When you are standing in line somewhere, you now have a captive audience. This is where I start most of my conversations. Now, unfortunately, the registration line this morning went way too fast because I have had some awesome conversations in registration lines, just waiting to go through the process.

Same thing, waiting to get to the buffet. And you know what's even better about this? It's when we have a captive audience, now we have a third thing in common. It's not just we love technology and we want to learn. It's also I want to get to the food or I want to get to the beer

or I want to get to whatever. So now we've got a third thing in common, and I've started a lot of conversations in lines. And quite honestly, like I said, it doesn't ever get easy. And maybe that's just me. Hopefully it is just me

because I would love to think that this becomes easy for everybody. It's still hard for me to start conversations. And if you put me into an environment like, let's say, the expo hall, I have a lot of trouble finding somewhere to anchor to go up and start a conversation with somebody. Because there's just people milling around and I feel kind of awkward just kind of walking up

to somebody who's just standing there and starting a conversation. So I love the captive audience because you know what? Again, what's our investment in this? Well, we're standing in line. We're going to have to stand in line until we get to whatever our goal is.

And so just during those few minutes, let me go ahead and start this conversation with somebody. And I have somebody who isn't going to walk away. They're not waiting for a friend. They're obviously in the same line that I'm in. And so I find it really easy to do that. Now, I am working on how do I become more comfortable talking to people in reception-type situations.

I don't have any tips for you because I'm not comfortable with that yet. And I'm not afraid to say that. It's okay to not know everything, right? Is that okay? Okay. Now, see, there is another advantage, especially if you have a buffet line at a conference

or another event like that, is when you make a friend in the line, now you have somebody to sit with. This has worked for me so many times at so many events because now I'm no longer walking into the big banquet room by myself. Now I'm walking in with a friend.

It's great because now you can say, hey, let's go find a table to sit together. And again, most of the time that works. Sometimes they want to go join their coworkers or sometimes they'll say, hey, would you like to come and join me and my coworkers? That's even better. But now we're not just walking into that situation completely on our own.

So, do I seem a little over-excited about some of this? It's just because it's worked so well and it's become such an important part of my life as a developer, just meeting all of these people. Now, I did get one great piece of advice from Jeff Fritz.

He works for Microsoft. And he says what he does when he walks into one of these banquet rooms is he looks for a table where there's two people kind of not sitting next to each other. You know, maybe they're kind of a couple seats apart. And then he goes in and he forms the third corner of the triangle.

Because he figures, okay, if one person doesn't want to talk, there's probably a good chance that the other person might. I've just doubled my odds of starting a conversation. And again, if you can get that conversation going, it's going to attract more people. And, oh, man. I just think about all of the great interactions that I've had doing this.

And the thing is you never know which of those conversations are going to turn into something bigger. Because what I'll find is, you know, at a typical conference that's three, four, five days long,

I might have conversations with maybe 20 people that I've never met before. I try to reconnect with people that I know to make sure that my relationships keep going. But I also try to meet a lot of new people. And most of those don't turn into longer relationships.

But sometimes they do. And I'm always kind of surprised at which ones do. Because it's that person that I had breakfast with on the first day. And for whatever reason, I keep running into that person over and over throughout the week. And we just stop and chat, and we might have lunch, and we might have a hallway conversation at some point.

And in fact, I didn't expect that he was going to be in the room, but Mr. David Neil, who's in the front row, is one of those people that I've had this experience with. You know, we met last year at a conference. And again, I think it just started out with a meal during one of the days. I think it was breakfast pretty close to the beginning of the conference.

And we just kept running into each other throughout the week. And we even had one of those great hallway conversations, you know, where you kind of skip a session and just talk to somebody. So, oh great, David's taking a picture of himself. So, not quite sure what to think about that. Because we have a narcissist down in the front row.

So, the thing is, you never know which of those conversations turn into something longer. And, you know, now I can make fun of him in a foreign country, right? David's a good guy. But we live, what, like 3,000 miles apart, right? Because I'm in California on the West Coast, and you're in Georgia, right?

Which is on the East Coast of the United States, which is still very far away from here. Another person is Philip Ekberg, like I mentioned. I met him about four years ago at an event. Kind of kept running into him over and over at that event. And we've kept in touch over the years. And it's weird because these people that you meet,

and maybe you see them once a year because you're just at the same event once a year. Philip's one of those people because he lives in Sweden. He lived in Australia for a while. And I've never been to either of those countries. But he would come to the United States for a Microsoft event. And so I get to see him once a year.

And the interesting thing is when you see people in person that you haven't talked to but you form these relationships, you pick up the conversations like they never left off. And that's something that still amazes me because it's like, you know what, we haven't talked for a year, but I'm still comfortable talking to you, and I feel like we haven't been apart that long.

And of course we keep in touch over social media and things like that. But that in-person communication is really important. And in fact, over the years I've formed relationships with quite a few people. And these are just people that I pulled off of my Twitter feed, the people I follow on Twitter.

It's not an exhaustive list, but these are like 37 people that I know because I talked to them at an event, conversation turned into something bigger. And that's something that, again, it's really hard for me to understand that because I'm not a social person. I'm not.

That's just not my nature. But I've somehow become that person. And it is this really ugly side effect because I have become that guy. I've become that guy. So the first time I experienced this, I was at an event,

sitting around a table talking to five or six people, and I know everybody that's in our circle. So I assume that everybody knows everybody else because obviously if I know you, you must be important that other people know you too because I don't just know people randomly, right?

But what I found out is, you know, having a conversation, it's like, oh, you've never met him before? Oh, you don't know her? And I'm the person who does the introductions. I'm the person who does the introductions? That's not right. I'm not that person. I have a friend that I worked with for many years,

and she was one of those kind of bubbly social people that did this by default, right? And I worked at the Disneyland Resort, which was an awesome place to work, but we have 20,000 people on site, okay? It's a lot of people in this one little area.

And we would just wander across the property and just come across somebody. She's like, hey, Steve, how's your son Jeff doing? And I'm like, how do you know him? And how do you know he has a son? And she was just one of those people that would collect all this information and hang on to it. And again, that's not me. I'm completely the opposite.

I have trouble remembering your name after you said it three minutes ago. And in fact, I end up apologizing because I speak quite a bit, and so I'll meet the same people over and over again. And it's like, okay, your face looks familiar. I'm sorry I don't remember your name. And so my standard line that I've come up with is,

I have to meet you five times before I remember your name. Which I know is not polite, but that's something I need to work on, is figuring out how can I remember people's names so I can go forward. What I really wanted was I really wanted Google Glass to work.

Because I would love Google Glass to say, this is Jeff. You last saw him three months ago at this event. And I'd be like, bing, okay, I remember that now. I would love that. Maybe contact lenses that aren't too intrusive. So I'm still waiting for that technology. But I found out that for the people that I do know,

I'm like, oh, okay, this is Deborah. She lives in the Bay Area, and she knows all about Angular. Oh, this is Phillip. He lives in Sweden, and he's been working on a bunch of Xamarin stuff. He does some async await stuff. Oh, Ike. Yeah, Ike's from San Diego, and he deals with SQL Server. He knows everything about SQL Server. Oh, Barry. Yeah, Barry's from Phoenix,

and he does really cool stuff with unit testing and TDD. Oh, yeah, and what about Adam? Oh, yeah, Adam works for Microsoft, and he's doing a lot of cool stuff with, like, UWP and HoloLens and stuff like that. I'm introducing these people to each other. That is so not me. But it's a really cool, ugly side effect.

And in fact, I've made use of it quite a bit because now what I found myself doing is connecting other people. So I'm going to point to Maggie. There's Maggie Pint right there. So I met her at a conference, and the first time I met her we just had a little chat.

I met her at another conference a couple months later, and we ended up having a longer hallway conversation because the session we wanted to go into was packed full, and neither of us wanted to stand up the whole time. So we ended up having, like, this hour-long conversation. And during that time I found out she is totally into problems with date time.

She knows all about the scheduling stuff, and she's like, yeah, so I've run into this and this and this and this, and I'm like, I know the perfect person to hook you up with. And that person is Matt Johnson. Matt Johnson is Mr. Date Time. And I knew him from interacting with him for years. He lived in Phoenix for a while,

then he moved up to work for Microsoft. And he was at that conference too. And I'm like, let me hook you up with Matt. And boy, those people talked nerdy stuff about date time like you would not believe. Man, time zones and daylight savings time, all that stuff, oh man.

But what's really cool about that is because now, you know, I consider these people my friends, Maggie's actually gotten involved in some of the open source projects that go around date time. And so she's, through Matt, has kind of gotten into a whole other world that she now blames me for, which I will take credit for that.

You know, it's like, yeah, that's great. I hooked two people up, I made somebody's life bigger. That's awesome. And I've been able to do that several times. And so I don't know how I became that person. I really don't. It wasn't planned, that's for sure.

Because if someone said, Jeremy, you're going to be the social coordinator at this event, I'd be like, no, I'm not. That's not going to happen. I can tell you that right now. But for whatever reason, this has just kind of happened organically because I made this decision that I'm going to step outside of my comfort zone,

face some of my fears, and, you know, specifically in an environment where I know I have at least two things in common with everybody in this room, I can be comfortable talking to them. And so now, you know, that fear has really turned into fearlessness. Now, I'm not going to say fearless meaning without any fear.

It's fearless as in I have less fear. Again, for me, it hasn't completely gone away. But here's the thing. Nobody is safe from me anymore.

Because, for example, when I was a young programmer, the loner of the conference, I would go and see these presenters and I'm like, oh, this guy must be super guru. He's up on the stage, he's telling me really cool things and it's influencing the way I'm developing and that's really cool. And I've made decisions on directions I want to go based on what this person said

and I'm really happy about that. And years later, I had a chance to talk to some of these people in person and I'm like, you know what, I'm going to go up and introduce myself. I'm going to say, you know what, you have no idea who I am. But I went and saw you speak back in 2009 and you talked about this and this and this

and that influenced my decisions to what I'm doing today. And I just want to say thank you for that. And because I'm not afraid to go up and look like an idiot, I can do that. And some of those people have actually turned into peers and colleagues now. So you never know where it's going to go.

Now, if you do want to continue this conversation, I do have a website which is called becomingasocialdeveloper.com. And what I'm trying to do is encourage other developers to do this. I want people to start talking to each other. I want people to start sharing the awesome experiences that they're having

so that other people will be encouraged to do it as well. And I'm looking for nice, comfortable ways of introducing this. So if you have any ideas, head out to the website and there's some links. Send me your ideas. Because I want to share those because I have some ideas.

They're not great. Based on my personal experience, they've worked. But I know other people have ideas that I don't because, again, I don't know everything. There you go. I said it. I don't know everything. So I want to hear from people who are having different experiences or who have different ideas and approaches because one of the things I'm concerned about is

I want to make sure that we're safe during this communication because just like I warned you guys at the beginning, this is not an interactive workshop. The reason I said that is because if I ever see that in a conference session description, I don't go in.

Because you know what? I want to have control over my own interactions. I don't want to go into a room where people are forcing me to interact. I don't want that. I want control over them myself. So knowing how I am, I want to make sure that I approach this in a way that other people will be comfortable with as well, which is why I didn't force you to turn to your neighbor and introduce yourselves. You can decide whether you'd like to do that on your way out or not,

but I'll leave that up to you. So let's just kind of review what we've seen. First of all, shyness is normal for introverts, but it's a behavior. It's not something that's innate in us. It's something that we've learned based, again, on some of the,

you know, if we derive our energy internally, we don't really have that motivation to go out and learn those interaction skills. And so shy becomes comfortable. But because shy is a behavior, it can be changed. And one way is by talking to developers, because developers love to talk.

Again, it's our outlet to talk about nerdy things that nobody else wants to talk about. And it's not always development stuff. You know, sometimes we'll end up talking about nerdy Star Trek stuff too, right? Or Settlers of Catan, that's another one that people love to... Yeah, apparently we've got at least one of those in the room. Yeah, you know who you are.

So this is like the place where we find those people, right? So let's talk, because we do love to talk. And then here's my three simple steps to starting conversation. I'm Jeremy. Again, I rely on politeness of people to respond with their names. What do you do?

Again, expect for them to say, I'm a developer. That's fine. Let's move on to the next step. So what kind of technologies are you working with? What's making you excited these days? And it doesn't have to be like what you're doing at work as a career. It could be a hobby stuff. People are doing really cool stuff with Arduinos, which I know nothing about.

I built the world's saddest robot at a workshop, but other than that, that's not my world. So I love seeing cool stuff that people do. And so this is just a really easy way to start a conversation. And remember, this week, we are in a safe place. We all have two things in common. We love technology, and we want to learn.

So we are in a safe place. You know that about every single person that's here. And then just kind of some tips. Turn off your force field. Again, feel free to pull it out. Make sure nothing's on fire. But as soon as you've done that, put it away. Turn off your force field.

If you are in a conversation and you see other people trying to join the circle, be welcoming. Invite them in. Don't make them go through that process of standing around listening awkwardly and hoping that they can inject something into the conversation. Bring them in. Make them feel welcome. And of course, if there is a line, if you're waiting in line for beer or food or something else,

now you have a third thing in common. Captive audiences are really, really, really easy to talk to. And hopefully I've gotten across the benefits. I have seen these benefits in my life, in my career. They have changed my career. They have changed how I think about things.

They've opened up whole new worlds for me. New technologies, new ideas, new challenges. And of course, a ton of new friends. So with that, I'm going to repeat the challenge. Meet somebody new. Do it as many times as you can while you're here this week.

You're going to find some of those relationships that will continue throughout the week. You'll be surprised by those. You'll find some relationships that continue once you get back home. And hopefully you'll be very pleasantly surprised by those. So meet someone new. Do it as many times as you can. If you want to practice, I will be here all week.

So feel free to practice on me. I have no problems at all with that. Because that makes it easier for me. If people come up to me, then I don't have to start the conversation, right? So that's kind of selfish. But yes, feel free to practice on me. And so that's what I have for you today. So to some talk. If you do have any questions, again, I'm going to be around for the week.

If you head out to my website, www.jeremybytes.com, you'll find these slides, as well as the link to the Becoming a Social Developer website. And of course, if you want to tweet really awesome things about me, I'm at Jeremy Bytes, or if you just want to follow or continue conversations later on,

I'd appreciate that. So with that, just one more reminder on your way out. Make sure to drop one of the evaluation cards in a bucket to let people know how well I'm doing, or how badly I'm doing, depending on how much you enjoyed this hour. And thank you for coming. And please, please, please meet somebody new this week. Thank you.