The Virtual Coffee Podcast

This week Bekah and Dan sat down with Aishwarya, front-end developer from India, about her first open source contributions and how her perspective on open source changed after her fourth (of ten!) Pull Request during Hacktoberfest. One word to describe you - Dedicated One word to describe your developer journey - Evolving Me Before You by Jojo Moyes Open-Source YouTube Videos: How to Find Beginner...

This week Bekah and Dan sat down with Kai Katschthaler, a technical writer and content creator, about their creation process, finding learning approaches that work for them, and mentoring others. Links: Kai's appearance on the Coming Out Pod Kinesthetic Learning Freecodecamp Codecademy Flatironschool Exercism Kai Katschthaler Kai is a tech content specialist and mental health advocate. They r...

This week Bekah and Dan sat down with Joe Karow, the Lead Engineer at a nonprofit, about his career change from the hospitality industry, his experience with the online bootcamp, 100devs, and about the ADHD experience. Joe Karow Joe is the Lead Engineer at InReach, a 501(c)3 registered non-profit building world’s first tech platform matching LGBTQ+ people facing discrimination and persecution with...

This week Bekah and Dan sat down with Jörn Bernhardt, a 2x founder in Germany, about his career path, the challenges of being a founder, and the key traits that have led to his success. About Jörn Jörn started developing web-based software in the last century when he was still in school. In 2018, he founded his second company compose.us where they implement digital solutions and share their knowle...

It’s the final episode of season six of the podcast and we’re bringing it to you live with Bekah, Dan, and Kirk! We talked a lot about Hacktoberfest with many side-tracks and segues in between. Sponsor Virtual Coffee! Your support is incredibly valuable to us. Direct financial support will help us to continue serving the Virtual Coffee community. Please visit our sponsorship page on GitHub for mor...

This week Bekah and Dan sat down with Shelley McHardy, a former chemistry teacher turned front end developer at Rightpoint , and talked about the early career developer's journey. She gave insight into what her seven-month interview process looked like, forcing interviewers to interview you, the importance of finding "your people", and being picky in your job search. Links: edX Coll...

In today's episode, Bekah and Dan talk to Ryan Kahn, a developer experience and productivity consultant from New York City, about his work as a consultant helping companies to build better software teams. He emphasizes the importance of recognizing that teams are made up of individuals who have different needs and approaches. He also breaks down the difference between quality, technical, know...

This week Bekah and Dan sat down with Julia Seidman, a technical marketing consultant and developer in the Seattle area, and talked about her work writing about different technologies, learning by teaching, and embracing the careen over the career. She talks about her career journey from studying anthropology to financial analysis to teaching high school English, ESL and Debate, before landing her...

In today's episode, Bekah and Dan talk to Chad Stewart, a Software Engineer from Kingston, Jamaica, about his journey into contributing to Open Source projects like Open Sauced and how to find your way to your first contribution. He shares the inspiration behind his #TechIsHiring project , which helps to identify tech jobs and resources, but more importantly, to connect people in the wider te...

This week Bekah and Dan sat down with Sadie a frontend developer for a federal agency, to chat about her experience navigating the interview process and how she found success after giving tech a second shot. She shares tips on how to avoid burnout both during the interview process and while you're working in tech. Links: 18f Skill Crush Leet Code Challenge Jennifer's List of Interview Qu...

For the 50th episode of the podcast, Dan and Bekah are live at the Kansas City Developer Conference 2022 answering listener questions and practicing their accents. Check out the video version on YouTube! Listener questions: What time do you go to sleep? (2:19) How does a computer get drunk? (12:42) What's the hardest part of community? (22:20) Ayu would like to hear the history of how Virtual...

In today's episode, Dan and Bekah talk with Seth Hall about the importance of intimate collaboration, advocating for yourself, and transferable skills as part of his job as a Technical Product Owner at Uniform . He shares how his background as a creative producer informs how he guides demo initiatives, creates roadmaps, and collaborates with other departments. About Seth Seth is a Technical P...

This week Bekah and Dan sat down with Bogdan Covrig, a Software Engineer in the Netherlands who's into Typescript, React and Node, about navigating different learning and career paths in tech before landing a job that fulfills his interests to see the changes he's making and provides a dynamic work environment. He also drops his tips on the most important things you can do if you're...

This week Bekah and Dan sat down with David Alpert, Director of Engineering at Northfield IT, about taking a personalized approach to helping others as they ask coding questions and navigate career paths. David shares the importance of bringing empathy to every situation and gives tips on how to handle challenging situations. Links: Logo (the programming turtle) Virtual Coffee Co-Working Room The...

In this episode of the podcast, Bekah, Kirk, and Dan discuss the decision to pause new membership and what the maintainers are doing to progress towards opening the community up again. We share what we think makes our community special, how we're working to preserve that, and some of the challenges we're figuring out as we take steps towards reopening membership. What goes into the long-...

This week Bekah and Dan sat down with Matt McInnis a former Math Professor, and current data scientist, full-stack engineer, and founder, about his journey through tech as a self-taught engineer. He shares his insight into building personal projects and creating value in the projects you work on, even if those projects are just for you. Links Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point Kidstreet Hacker...

In today's episode, Bekah and Dan talk to Meg Gutshall, a Ruby on Rails Developer, and community volunteer at Virtual Coffee. She shared all things Philly and some memorable stories of how she's supported others--including Bekah--in their journeys into tech. Meg talks about her Accountabilibuddies group at Virtual Coffee and how she chose Ruby after graduating from a full stack bootcamp....

In today's episode, Dan and Bekah talk to Andrew Bush, a Mobile Engineer Specializing in React Native. One of the updates we've made to our site is to have tags on our members page to indicate what volunteer roles they have. Andrew is one of our Monthly Challenge team leads, and he shared with us his experiences helping to facilitate the challenges, keeping our community motivated, and t...

A special live episode of the Virtual Coffee Podcast - Bekah and Dan meet for the first time in real life, and get to hang out with Kirk on Kirk Day! Also Dan fires Bekah (for the first time). Watch the stream on YouTube! Sponsor Virtual Coffee! Your support is incredibly valuable to us. Direct financial support will help us to continue serving the Virtual Coffee community. Please visit our sponso...

This week Bekah and Dan sat down with Roger Gentry, who has spent a lot of his career managing security and compliance for clients across the United States, about his passion for problem-solving and what to do when you get stuck. We're all going to run into frustrations during our tech journeys, but knowing how to navigate through them is one of the key skills you'll need. About Roger Ro...

This week Bekah and Dan sat down with Yolanda Haynes, a career changer who went from working as a certified occupational therapy assistant to a Software Engineer, about the importance of finding community during your learning journey, and remembering that you shouldn’t judge your journey based on anyone else’s; focus on the learning journey, absorbing what you can, and preparing yourself for your...

This week Bekah and Dan sat down with Helen Griffin, a full-stack developer and founder, about how the tech industry changed during the time she was a founder, how what she’s learned as a founder has helped her to have a broader perspective about the tech industry, and what she’s doing with her companies Jovial and State of Developers to support developers in their career journeys. Links The State...

This week Bekah and Dan sat down with Amy Shackles, a Senior Software Engineer at MURAL, about how she made her way from being a Psychology and Anthropology double major to being a Senior Software Engineer. She shares what’s made her experience at MURAL a great one and the importance of openness in communication. Links amyshackles.com Amy's regular expression parser MDN article on regular exp...

This week Bekah and Dan sat down with Brian Rinaldi, a Developer Experience Engineer at LaunchDarkly with over 20 years of experience as a developer for the web, about how Developer Relationships has changed over the years and why need not just remote community experiences but also in-person opportunities. We talk about the value of different types of communities and how each is necessary to suppo...

Kirk, Dan, and Bekah are back again to wrap up Season 4 of the podcast. We talk about Hacktoberfest and how proud we are of what our community did over the month of Hacktoberfest: 100 members signed up, 66 members merged at least 1 pr, 336 collectively we merged 336 PRs were merged by these members across 129 repos. On the virtualcoffee.io site: 81 PRs merged, 50 were new member profiles, 31 other...