Welcome Daniel!

Transcript

Mandi Walls (00:09): Welcome to Page It to The Limit, a podcast where we explore what it takes to run software in production successfully. We cover leading practices used in the software industry to improve the system reliability and the lives of the people supporting those systems. I’m your host, Mandi Walls. Find me at LNXCHK on Twitter.

Alright folks, welcome back to another episode of Page it to the Limit, getting toward the end of the year here. But it’s really exciting as we have yet another new developer advocate here at PagerDuty. If you’ve been with us for a while listening to the show that folks have been in and out and we’ve been trying to hire, and we’re very excited to have almost a full team now. So it’s the first time in a while that we’ve had a full cohort of developer advocates, so it’s really exciting. So joining me today is Daniel. He is joining us in Lisbon. Well, he’s in Portugal. We’ll find out more, but he’ll be helping us out in Europe and we’re looking forward to hearing more from him. So Daniel, welcome to PagerDuty. Welcome to the show. Tell us a bit about yourself and where you’ve been, what you’ve done.

Daniel Afonso (01:23): First of all, thank you so much, Mandi for having me here, and thank you for the warm welcome. It’s really exciting to get my first month completed at PagerDuty right now and being here on the podcast to be able to talk to everyone. So in some introductions. So I’m Daniel Afonso. I’m based in Coimbra here in Portugal. So for those of you who are not familiar with Coimbra, I like to say it’s two hours away from Lisbon, one hour and a half from Porto. So this kind of gives people a margin to get to know the city. Yeah, I’ve joined PagerDuty as developer advocate as well. I’m part of the Lisbon office, so I’ll be doing a lot of stuff hopefully here in Europe. Some stuff about myself, that’s the very interesting part. So let’s start with the personal part. So I am a huge comic book nerd. That’s the first thing. You’re not seeing the video right now, but behind me there’s a bunch of collectibles. I like to collect comic book things, Funko pops statues. That’s basically all around from me.

Mandi Walls (02:28): I mean, he’s making it sound fairly innocent, but we are going to have to post a picture of this somewhere. The entire wall behind him is full of Funko Pops and it’s quite a collection there for sure. 100%.

Daniel Afonso (02:44): There’s more stock probably here than in some shops, I believe. Yes, I believe that. Yeah, it started with one. That’s the issue with collections. My wife gave me one of these Funko Pops six, seven years ago. Now we’re over 700 in this house, so there’s a couple of them, but that’s a bit about personal me, about the job and the role itself. So developer advocacy has always been my dream role as first since I started hearing about it, it started, my background is in engineering. I was an engineer for five, six years prior to doing the transition. I was an engineer at a conference and I heard someone presenting a talk to the audience, and that person presented himself as a developer advocate. And in that day I was like, oh, what is this developer advocate thing that all these people, at least almost half of these people in this conference were the role.

Daniel Afonso (03:47): And one of my coworkers back then said, oh, you probably would love to be a developer advocate. And I was like, what? I would love to be a developer advocate. What’s that thing? So I kind of started researching and learning more about the role and figuring out what it entitled. And it was right. It was really up my alley being the person was there, being the bridge between the community and developers, understanding what are their needs, talking about it, teaching them, helping them grow. And from that point on, I ended up pretty much thinking, what can I do to become a developer advocate? So I did my personal roadmap. I was like, okay, I’m going to start writing blog posts, I’m going to start doing talks. I’m going to start helping people in forums on stuff that might make sense. And from kind of that point on, it’ll led me to, well, where I am today. So I’ve been working as developer relations in the past two, three years. So now I’ve joined PagerDuty as a developer advocate, and I’m really, really excited to work with this amazing team, which I’m having a ton of fun already. So fun fact, we just came from our team on site, so we got to meet each other, we got to talk, we got to hang out, and it was really, really exciting.

Mandi Walls (05:09): It was super great. Since I joined PagerDuty during the pandemic, I joined in 2020. It was 2022 before I met any of the team in person. So this has been really great. Sid joined us in September. You joined us last month and we actually got to meet people before they been here for a bunch of years. So that part was amazing. And of course we met Xenda, who has been with us for a while, and Miguel, who is our other community manager as well. We’ll hear from them on the next episode. But yeah. So what are your sort of areas of expertise? My understanding is you do a whole lot in JavaScript land, so tell us about that.

Daniel Afonso (05:51): Yes, so I’ve been very active mostly in JavaScript communities for the past two or three years because prior to becoming the developer advocate, I was a front-end developer. Prior to becoming a front-end developer, I was doing backend with Java and Kotlin. But that feels like a lifetime ago. Yeah, I’ve been very active in the JavaScript events. So if you have been into one in the last two years, the chances of you seeing me there are very, very high. So I’ve been very active, namely in React communities as well more recently as well in SolidJS as I’ve been part in my free time contributing to open source as part of the SolidJS DX team and some other stuff about these events and conferences. I’m part of some organizations. So if you attended React Summit in the past two years, this year and the past one, I’ve been part of the program committee, so I’m one of the people who gets lucky to figure out, okay, let’s see, what are the talks we’re going to put out? And as well, I’m part of the conference that happens here in Coimbra, which is called JNation, which is not just a Java conference, but that’s a completely different aspect of it because traditionally it started as a Java conference and now we had a JavaScript, AI and bunch of other stuff, DevOps. So yeah, that’s basically what I’ve been active in my free time JavaScript and organizing conferences.

Mandi Walls (07:12): Awesome. So what are you looking forward to doing for PagerDuty?

Daniel Afonso (07:17): That’s a great question. I feel like in one month that is full by, there’s so many options and opportunities here at this point, what I’m looking forward is continue working with you, Mandi. We sit with our team and figuring out, okay, what’s the current state of advocacy at PagerDuty? How can we improve our processes? How can we make sure that we keep putting amazing content out there for everyone to see? So these are some of the things that I’m excited right now. And then the rest is continue to doing talks, continue to do events. Now I have to figure out, and that’s a very fun challenge coming from a non just focused on DevOps background because DevOps has been part of my day-to-day, either as an engineer, as a DevOp advocate, but it was never been like my full focus. So it’s really exciting to figure out, okay, now how can I start doing content that fits the DevOps world, but also can tie in with the background that I already have and the stuff that I’ve been already presenting and stuff that people already expect from me, from the people that I’ve met me.

Daniel Afonso (08:24): So these are some of the things that I’m excited right now.

Mandi Walls (08:27): Excellent. Awesome. So of all the places you have been for conferences, what’s your favorite conference location?

Daniel Afonso (08:34): My favorite conference

Mandi Walls (08:38): Or just the location? What’s a good city to go to for conferences?

Daniel Afonso (08:42): I won’t speak about the conference that I’m organizing because that would be heavily biased,

Mandi Walls (08:46): Cheating.

Daniel Afonso (08:48): You have to

Mandi Walls (08:48): Stay home in your own pajamas. That’s just a little bit different.

Daniel Afonso (08:51): I won’t talk about those ones. One that has a very, very special place in my heart is React India. So it happens in Goa. I’ve been to React India. I was to React India two years ago and I participated remotely last year because I couldn’t travel there. But it’s a completely, well, it feels a different world from all the other conferences. I dunno if it’s something like with the audience, if it’s something with the way the conference is organized. So it’s a conference that happens in a resort, in Goa in India, and the way that all the event is set up together, it just has this warmth. It just has this vibe that, I don’t know. It’s one of those conferences that every time someone asks me to put in my top three, that’s probably there. Then there are two others that I also really, really love.

Daniel Afonso (09:41): One of them is React Alicante, who also happens in Alicante usually around September, October. I’ve spoke there three times in the last three years. So at this point I’m already a recurrent speaker in this conference, but I just love it so much as well because first of all, Alicante’s weather is amazing. Second of all, there’s an amazing balance between the content that the organizers make. So Victoria and Nacho, which are the organizers of React Alicante, they have been doing such an amazing job piecing out old speakers and introducing new speakers. So basically it gets to this vibe where someone who comes new to this conference, it just feels like they’re joining a family because some part of the speakers already know each other. There’s this familiarity and everyone just fits together. So you’re not seeing my hands when I’m joining my fingers, figure out everything is fitting. So yeah, that’s the second one. The third one is React Norway. We have talked about this last week in our offsite, it happens in Larvik in Norway. It’s an amazing conference from a community perspective, but it’s also an amazing conference from a venue perspective because it’s an amazing resort. They have been doing an amazing job there, and it also has an amazing spa. So this is just a completely different topic.

Mandi Walls (11:05): Absolutely. So I’ve been to a lot of events and I think that the DevOps folks are missing a trick here that the JavaScript folks have pinned down with having your events at resorts. I feel cheated almost. What is going on here? We’re a random conference center or a hotel ballroom or whatever, and the JavaScript folks are over here living it up at a spa. So yeah, for the event organizers out there that might be listening, this is a trick that we’ve been missing for sure.

Daniel Afonso (11:39): Yeah. Not just from the attendees perspective, but it’s also from the speakers. You can make sure your speakers are fully rested before they give a talk, just having them go to the spot a bit before.

Mandi Walls (11:53): This is speaking my language, I am totally on board with this. I know we’ve watched, I think of Scott who used to work with us. He’s been to a couple of the J on the Beach and some of the others. Mediterranean Spain really has the market on excellent places to have conferences during the nice weather. So there’s a whole lot of Java and JavaScript conferences all around the Mediterranean there. But yeah, nothing along the lines of going to spa resorts in Norway. Yeah, alright. No, that sounds absolutely delightful, quite honestly. So yeah. Awesome. Excellent.

Daniel Afonso (12:37): We need to find some extra conferences where we can all do that in the future

Mandi Walls (12:41): For sure.

Daniel Afonso (12:43): Or if you are organizing a conference on a resort, please invite us to speak there.

Mandi Walls (12:47): Absolutely. We’re absolutely available. We’re happy to talk about anything incident management related or any of our other choice topics that we may have available.

Daniel Afonso (12:58): Imagine talking about incident response and then being able to relax after that in a jacuzzi or something like that.

Mandi Walls (13:06): Yeah, that sounds like good practice, right? Yes. You’ve had your incident. It’s all over now. Everyone needs to take a bit of a break, so why don’t we take a break, right? Yeah, exactly. I’m totally for it. Totally for it. Absolutely. That’s awesome. All right, dude, well, this has been great. So for folks to find you in social media land, where are you living in social media these days? We will add it to the show notes,

Daniel Afonso (13:34): So I’m pretty much anywhere I can be. My name is danieljcafonso pretty much everywhere. So on Bluesky, on X, formerly known as Twitter, even though I’m not as active there as I am on Bluesky right now, LinkedIn, Dev.to. So pretty much if you just search danieljcafonso the odds of being me, it’s very high.

Mandi Walls (13:58): Awesome. Excellent. Well, we will keep everyone posted on where you are. As always, for our events, for PagerDuty, you can check us out pagerduty.com/events. You’ll find where we are, where we’re headed, and all of that great stuff, as well as following us on LinkedIn. It’s usually the best place for the corporate PR stuff. And yeah, if anybody’s out there has questions, wants to get in touch, we’re always community-team@pagerduty.com or you can join the community forums, ask us questions there, and we’ll send you the right people if we don’t know the answer. And yeah, so Daniel, we’re looking forward to seeing where you head out to on the road and what kind of trouble we get up to with everything. And yeah, welcome to PagerDuty. It’s been great.

Daniel Afonso (14:41): Thank you so much. I’m really excited for it.

Mandi Walls (14:43): Awesome. Thank you so much out there. Our next episode will be our 2024 recap, so everybody from the team will be on, so don’t miss that. If you are not currently subscribed, please subscribe in your favorite pod catcher and we’ll be back with you in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I’ll wish you an uneventful day that does it for another installment of page to the Limit. We’d like to thank our sponsor, PagerDuty for making this podcast possible. Remember to subscribe to this podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, you can find our show notes at pageittothelimit.com, and you can reach us on Twitter at Pageit2theLimit using the number two. Thank you so much for joining us, and remember, uneventful days are beautiful days.