Hi everyone, my name is Patrick McHugh and if you've ever thought of going freelancing, this episode is for you. We cover why and when to go freelancing and when not to, as well as the dark side of freelancing. Joining me today is Andrea Jardini, cloud native, consultant, trainer and big, big community enthusiast. So enjoy it. I forgot who I asked this, but since you're very involved in communities when you travel, do you already kind of know people of the city you're travelling
to? Like when we're talking about Amsterdam, I know the people you know here, but also the city. That's a good question. Not always, you know, like I had the chance to do my career to, to move a lot around. So I'm originally from Italy. I worked in Switzerland, in Berlin for years, in Amsterdam three years, and now I'm based in Paris. So I know I know people around a little bit, but being part of this community is also about reaching out and being spontaneous.
Like, right. I mean, let's say that I go to a new city where I don't know anyone or, you know, not, I don't don't have any, you know, any, any close friend, for example. I can just, you know, ask around and yeah, you know, somebody at this based in Madrid, let's say. And you know, when I go to Madrid, maybe we can just hang out for a coffee or something like this. It's, it's part of being, being part of a, of a wide, of a wider
and bigger community, right? I'm, I'm based right now in Paris, so I'm part of the Parisian community. But it's always nice to have this feeling of being part of something bigger. Yeah. And whenever you need it, whenever you, you know, whenever you want to experience something different, when you, whenever you get to know somebody in a different region, it's very easy to reach out. People are very are very chilled
from a point of view. In fact, some of my friends are very surprised at every now and then. And they're, they're like, so you just go on LinkedIn and write to people like, yeah, yeah, sure. That's what I do a. Lot I do a lot. That's funny. What What community specifically do you feel part of the most? Because I think there's a lot of communities within this tech landscape. Or do you see it as kind of tech, as an umbrella?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I would say that I'm the closest to the to the cloud native community. So all the community surrounding everything, infrastructure, cloud native, Kubernetes, this kind of thing. Yeah, I would say that's the one I've I've been the closest, let's put it this way, both when I was here in Amsterdam, previously in Berlin, but also, yeah, now in Paris pretty much. So it's, it has been just, you know, I'm trying to yeah, to
give some continuum. Let's put it this way, even though you know, I don't dislike going to meet ups that are like unrelated to to tech or unrelated to cloud native specifically. And what came first, because I know you've been freelancing for a good and long time, Was the community in this feeling of, let's say in building those relationships first before then you ventured in freelancing or did freelancing come first and then you found kind of this
community and bonded with? It no, community definitely came first. I'm, I'm preparing a talk for next week for a, for a conference I'm going to about community and that I got involved in community and, and I tried, you know, to get back to the first time I got in touch with a community and it was back in 2013. That's the first time I gave a public talk and it was more of a, it was more of a challenge for me.
I used to be like, you know, 10-15 years ago, like a pretty shy person, introverted, pretty shy. Now I'm not the most extrovert one, but I've definitely improved. They fail and they're getting involved in community giving, you know, conference talks. Going to meet ups was a way for me to just fight that aspect of myself. Like I didn't, nobody really likes being introverted and being shy, right?
So it was more of a way for me to get out there and face something that I, you know, I was not sure how to handle. Let's put it this way. And and yeah, basically, like year by year, I found out that this was useful for me. It was useful for. Yeah, to get a little bit out of the shell, to put myself in a more in a challenging situation. I didn't really know how to handle it this way. Yeah, and then at some point you decided to actually venture out on your own and start freelancing.
What were some of the decisions and and why did you end up going freelancing instead? In my case it was a very gradual process. Let's put it this way. So I've been here. I started as an employee first when I was living in in Berlin. I worked there for a company for a start up over there for four years. And back then I started doing some things on the side, some little freelancing things, in particular workshops I was
doing. So you know, I would work during the day and then sometimes in the evening I had a workshop for the US. So it was working pretty well with times difference, for example. Then as I moved to the Netherlands that I found out that in, you know, in the Netherlands is very common. Also today I have like a four day work week. I got employed again in the Netherlands for a company for four days and one day a week. I was dedicating it to
freelancing. And then, you know, as you know, the the amount of project came up, the as I was feeling more and more confidence also about the bureaucracy and everything that is behind freelancing, like the non romantic part. Nobody talks about that, that that's when I decided venturing, you know, and go full on freelancing pretty much. But it was a very gradual transition over over several
years this way. I want to zoom into that non romantic part but before we do, you said you started out gradually and even with workshops. How? How did you get those gigs in the 1st place? Like did you just reach out to companies or did they find you? That's a very good question.
So the start up I was working for in Berlin was a small start up with like 3540 people and they wanted to develop a new product that was cloud native first much so running in the cloud and so on. The problem is that our engineers didn't have any, didn't have much expertise with
cloud. And so they asked me if I could develop a small workshop to run internally to our engineers to, you know, give them the basic of what it means to have a software trans on cloud native, what it means cloud native, what means the cloud and Kubernetes. I gave that workshop internally and it went really well. Like I like the process of like building the material, the exercise, delivering the
workshop. And since then, you know, like at the end of this workshop, I basically found myself with all this work I've done, I'm like, OK, I should reuse it somehow. So I gave it to a couple of conferences before and then through a friend, like really for a friend, like they were a, my company's looking for another trainer, somebody that knows Kubernetes and wants to deliver some, some workshops.
Would you be up for it? And yeah, the time was working well and I just started doing it and I say let's see, let's see how it goes, let's see if it works out or not. That's very nice. Yeah, it was, you know, you need somebody to give you like the the initial kick very often. And I think it's part, it's part of the game.
It's part of the also the freelance community, like helping each other out because at the end freelancing, you also get a little bit more, you know, if you don't build yourself, your network, it's not like you go to an office and you meet people or you know, just projects or gigs are not coming
out of the sky, right? You need to actively build a build a network, actively build like, you know, a group of people that you trust and with whom you you work well and with whom you can exchange tips and these kind of things. Is that also then part of the kind of non romantic slide that you touched on or what do you mean with that? I mean, I feel like in the past couple of years, I have the feeling, especially since COVID, there has been a lot of, you
know, this asshole culture. You always need to, to do more, you know, with you don't want to have a boss, you need to be your own boss and so on. And a lot of those talks are very, you know, like they say all the positive things about being independent, but they like, they completely ignore all the, you know, boring part. You need to deal with bureaucracy sometimes. You're going to make mistakes and you're going to fix them yourself.
There are you need to activate. I mean, you're basically your own CFOCMOCEO and you know, the whole C-Suite is just one person. And this is a bit the part that not a lot of people talk about. It's, it's a little bit, you know, it's more difficult. It's all the things to learn as well. If you're willing to learn them, you're going to love, you're going to love freelancing.
But there are people that, you know, like, I struggle a lot with bureaucracy, bureaucracy, like it's my worst nightmare. Oh, yeah. It's, it's horrible. Like, I just want to work, you know? But, you know, there are people, for example, don't like to to market themselves as much and so on. So this is a little bit the part that not a lot of people talk about, or at least not not as often, Right. It's. Yeah. It's a part of freelancing. It is important.
But yeah, that has been a little bit left out whenever we are about this. Talk about be your own boss. You can walk from the beach. Yeah, it doesn't. Work, I mean, those, those things really like seem attractive to me and I've thought of freelancing and next to like the, the insecurities and maybe a bit of impostor syndrome in my skills and what I can deliver. It's also the feeling of I like the company, this company here at CBI, like the community. I like some of the values and
principles. We come together every Tuesday, we share knowledge and I would lose that. I would lose, let's say, the colleagues that I work with more so on a day-to-day basis or this feeling of community than within the company. Is that also something that happened to you because you already were part of a lot of communities when you went freelancing? Is it not lonely? A little bit is natural, right? As you're, as you're saying right now, we are a team.
We work together on a project. So we meet regularly, we work together through we work together to achieve a certain object, a certain target, right? When you have freelance, it's a lot different. And this is where you know, also freelance community. They are that they're important.
Like surround yourself with other people that do the same thing that you do. So for example, in my case, somebody else doing also cloud native, but also for example, freelancer that do something completely unrelated is always very interesting. Having goes to different perspective of, you know, how things are going. You don't want to be closed in your own bubble. You don't want to be completely isolated from everybody else. It's important that you yeah, always keep your eyes open a
little bit. And again, it's about it's you need to put effort in order not to make it happen, right? If you don't want to be isolated, if you don't want to feel lonely, you are the one that will have to go out there, find other people, go to a Co working space, whatever works for you. But it's on you, right? And. No one else is going to fix it for you. Yeah, yeah, nobody else is going to fix. It for you?
Interesting. And then I'm thinking of, OK, when would I go freelancing because especially early on, early on in my career, I was like that technical kind of insecurity was bigger, but it doesn't really go away, not I've noticed. It never goes away. It never goes away. Can you start freelancing early on in your career or would you still advise to go through let's say the corporate ladder a bit and then learn and go freelancing after? I would but but again, it's my
opinion. Sure it's not. There is not a manual about freelancing, right? I would still advise to work for a company for some years. I think it's in, it's important not only to get, you know, to get the, you know, a little bit more structure. I mean, I think it's important to get a little bit more structure in your work to see how a real company works. I've learned a lot in the company I worked for, like every
time. It is though, it is very important to work for a company where you're learning something. This is the important thing. But, you know, I worked mainly with start-ups when during my career as an employee and, you know, seeing them grow from like 30 people to like 200 and see how all the procedure or the internal procedure are changing.
It's, I think it's important, you know, you need to be able when you're a freelancer also to organize yourself, to organize your work in a, in a structured way, to make transparent what you're doing to your client, for example. And these are skills that maybe, you know, when you're like, younger or when you're right out of university, they're not obvious to have, right? Sometimes, yeah. At least I didn't have them when I got out of university this way. Yeah, me neither.
I mean, I've, I've learned a lot in companies and I also think it's interesting like company dynamics and organizational structure and being part of that. I have not been like say from a, an outside perspective, I have been in it from a consultancy perspective. But then I don't have the feeling of, let's say risk or what if I lose this assignment or I get to choose which assignments I like and I get to switch as well. Like I, I've been with QIBA for five years, always as a software
engineer. And then this January, it was like there was an opportunity for a product management role. And I always kind of also romanticized the idea. And now I could just be like, can I try this? Because I really want to try this. And that was enough for me. And I actually land this position. I'm having a lot of fun with it. So then the the flexibility of consultancy, I'm not sure how it
is for freelancing. For example, if you go from assignment to assignment and the the gap between assignments is too big, would you then go for an assignment for example, like early on in career where you can learn and grow and etcetera, etcetera? Because those are more hard to find, I think the more you grow. They are hard to find. Very often companies where they look for, when they look for freelancers, they look for somebody that's already has the
skill, right. They have a problem they want to solve. They don't have the skills internally. So they are somebody external that has the skills that comes and fixes the problem. So it's true as well that when you're a freelancer, you need to spend time actively also learning your stuff, You know, that it be in your own, you know, in your own time.
Some of the time, if you find the perfect gig that you know, is where you know, you like the people you work with and you also have the opportunity to learn something new, it's, it's fantastic. I mean, at the end, you always end up learning something, right? But like on a topic that maybe you were curious about that you have haven't had the chance to, to touch. If that's, that's, that's the best deal ever.
But at times you also need to just take a step back, you know, maybe when you have like a more like quiet time or like a period where you don't have any contract going on. It's also about, yeah, keeping yourself up to date. Let it be with podcast, with some conferences or just, you know, like hacking things out on on your laptop pretty much. Yeah, I'm curious what what works for you in educating yourself. Let's say you're in a gap
between assignments. Do you go to conferences, workshops, or what do you do to educate yourself and keep up to date? I mostly tend to to hack things around. So I have like I have like a mental list of like projects like in the cloud native space that I never had the chance to use, that I never had the chance
to experiment with. And whenever like I have a little bit of time, I have a little bit of, you know, a little bit of a gap between one project and another or I take a break because it's also important. Yeah, maybe I spend like a couple of days like trying to understand how the project works and you know how we can we can bring value, for example in my next assignment. You mentioned a freelance community and it wasn't something like before speaking to you, I didn't know that
existed. And it makes a lot of sense because there's a lot of communities in different aspects of life nowadays in any case. But what does a freelance community do? For example, what does it offer you specifically? Yeah. I mean, when you talk about the freelance community, you can mean them as just a group of freelancers that meet that meet
together. One thing I'm part of is a, is a collective, like a freelance collective, OK, it's called, it's called FICA works like FICA have written like the, the Swedish FICA, like the afternoon break. It pretty much is a collective of lands, like a group of friends that end up, you know, working more or less within the same field. Let's put it this way. And what we do is just helping each other out, you know, the
beef bureaucracy with projects. Sometimes there are projects that's, you know, come my way that are really interesting. But maybe I'm already busy for the next six months. And, you know, if I if I don't take the project, it would go to somebody else. And maybe I know somebody within this community that I trust, somebody that I know, and then I can say, hey, if you want, I can put you in in contact with this person. They're looking for a project.
I think. I think they're a good fit from the point, from the skills point of view. And you know, we try to make something together. This is the idea of a cooperative really try to, you know, basically look like a company, but but when where everybody's independent. So each one of us is independent within this cooperative. Each one of us is a freelancer, but whenever we go to to like a bigger company for, you know, a project, for example, we present ourself as a as a company this
way. So let's say that we have a project with four freelancers. If one of them needs to leave because, you know, family situation or whatever, we can find somebody else to replace him. This. This is the idea. And also very often whenever you work, especially with bigger companies, it's a little bit more difficult to get project with bigger companies whenever you are an individual, whenever
you are a single freelancer. And instead, in this way, we create sort of a, yeah, a structure we put in place a structure that makes them, that makes us, yeah, a real company. Interesting. And we try to treat it a little bit as a, as an open source project to put it this way. So we try to take decisions together, but we also try, yeah, to basically push the push the cooperative in the direction we
want. And yeah, we have like some members, we have some members that are internal to cooperative and then we have a wider community around and you know, sometimes organize events for the smaller community, sometimes they're open to the wider community as well. It's just it's, it's very fluid. Let's put it this way. So it's a, it's a very self organized. Yeah, that's very nice. I mean, I, I've always been part of consultancy and I can compare it with what I think it would be
like freelancing. And then you have like nowadays more so Midlands constructions where you have a bit of bit more stability, a little bit more risk and reward also because of that. And then this, let's say freelance community or collective. And it's like the third aspect then of it. And it doesn't have to be a Lone Ranger type of style. I think that's very interesting. Exactly. Yeah, it also helps a lot with with solitude, as we were saying
before, right. Having a community of people that shares the same problem that you have does more or less the same thing that you have. And, you know, keep in mind that with many of those people, I never had a project together. So we do the same things, but for different client. We try, you know, not to compete with each other with our we, we
try to help each other out. Whenever there is somebody that is, you know, like their project gets gets cut short, for example, we try to find, you know, a new contract for them and this kind of thing. It's just about, you know, helping each other out. That's these these the main idea of the. One of my friends is working on his own startup. It's more of a code automation tool and he really always talks about he's never going back to the corporate ladder. He loves doing what he's doing
now. Have you ever thought of going back as well? Or would you see are you using the same camp that you're like, I'm never going back. No, I don't exclude it to be honest. This is another misconception that, you know, comes a little bit from the I, I feel like comes a bit from the asshole culture a little bit. But you know, if you, if you go, you need to go be your own boss. And if you don't do that, you're, you're basically a failure.
I know many, I have many friends, I have many people they know that went back to a full time job and they're super, super, super happy. And you know, like even within our community, even within our, our cooperative and it's
fantastic. Like it's, you know, people are very positive about it. Other freelancers are like, well, I mean, conditions in your life changed, you know, maybe, you know, maybe you need to move, maybe you'll get a new kid, maybe you want just to be a little bit more, you know, not always on the hook for the next project, not always on the on on the lookout. I don't think it's, I don't think it's a bad thing. I don't think it's a bad thing.
And also, again, like when you work for a company, when you work as an employee, you basically also get paid to learn. When you're a freelancer, you don't get paid to learn, you get paid to deliver. That's it. You just, you just need to deliver. And, and yeah, if you don't manage really to cut your, to cut your little place to learn new things. Also going back to the traditional company for a while, being an employee for a while or, you know, for the rest of for the rest of your career.
It's it's totally fine. I don't see the, I don't see it as a failure. I feel like if in the future I ever, I ever have a time where I feel like, OK, freelancing is not for me anymore. I want to go back to like an employee. I I will not be disappointed by that. I will not feel bad about it or anything like that. Yeah, I really like that perspective that the career journey is fluid, right? And you didn't just take a right and then you're on that path.
You can still circle back, or there's other paths, and you can make decisions based on your own context in that way. Freelance is about making like doing what is best for you, right? I switched to freelancing because I realized that the job that I wanted didn't exist pretty much. I, I like doing workshops, right? Doing technical training. I like to do like technical work every now and then organized to do events. And there is just no job in this
way. And so if at a certain point, the best thing for you and the best thing for your your situation is going back to a full time job, that that be it. Yeah, why not? It's. Totally fine. Like it's. There is no shame in that. No, exactly. Yeah. I mean, you already touched on that when you're an employee, you also get paid to learn. And when you're a freelancer, you more so get paid to execute,
right? You have a certain expertise, company needs that more so now than later and you get paid to execute. Have you also been on an assignment where you're like and this is just not the assignment for me? And how did it affect you? It happens. It happens. Unfortunately, it's yeah, there is no, there is never like it's never somebody's fault. It's always a little bit in the middle, like it's up to you to scope a project and to understand really what is going on.
Sometimes, you know, yeah, you just, you just end up in a project or in a team and you just, it just doesn't click right. And this can be for a variety of reasons, like the expertise that I was supposed to bring. Maybe it's not what they were expecting or the team dynamics don't work out there. There are many things.
What happens most of the time is that I tend, I tend basically to stick with it for a while to see if things change or see if I can influence thing in a certain way, in a positive way. But you know, after a while, if things don't work out for you and don't work out for your client, you just say, hey, I mean, it was nice working with you and we show the best, but you know, things are not working out and most of the time you just like it's, it's on both side, right?
It doesn't happen very often, to be honest. But but yeah, it's on both sides. So it's like the kind of you part ways in a, in a, yeah, in a very cordial way, like with without any, yeah, without any anger, without any, any issue, it's fine.
I think you have to. I mean, I'm only part of this, let's say company's fair in NL, but throughout this journey, and I don't have the longest career journey, I see people going from company to company and all of a sudden you circle back around and you're like, hey, I know you have worked, we've worked together or we were in the same company, but we never actually worked together. But I know your name.
Do you feel that as well? I mean, and, and you've travelled kind of across a lot of countries. Do you still come across a lot of the same people? Yeah, it happens. Like, you know, the community at the end is it, it feels big, but at the end it's always the same people. Let's put it this way. Every now and then there is somebody new, but it's yeah, it's I've met recently like a colleague of mine I was working with for this start up back in Berlin.
I've met her again because now she works for a start up in the Netherlands. And so, you know, it was like, yeah, like back in Berlin, we never, we were never like talking to each other that much. We were in two completely different teams. So, you know, we were working in the same company. And when you're 30 people, you
sort of like know everybody. But now she's more, she's getting like closer and closer to like the cloud native space, working for a company that does cloud native tools and so on. And so, yeah, like you just, you just meet again and it's, it's always interesting, it's always fun.
That's really nice. I'm curious to hear your opinion on how, let's say the community aspect of the tech landscape has changed Because I've had many people on the table and they say, and they told me that kind of this meet up culture that we had before COVID ish is kind of trickling off and there's not really that much that many people going to meet ups
nowadays. There's more content online and people self educate and if people self educate this like attachment to community, it's harder to find or you only find it in conferences or you only find it if you do more. So outreach rather than going to meet ups is something, is that something you recognize as well? So and so so COVID definitely
didn't help. So COVID was a big hit for community and and for meet ups in particular, like the whole meet up scene was basically, you know, frozen for like 3-2, three years, like gone. Like nothing was happening anymore. I saw. I also feel that people got really fed up with online conferences. Like people like, yeah, if I have to watch an online conference, I'd rather watch a YouTube video at my own time and at my own pace. At least that's also my feeling. I think.
I think meet ups are coming, are coming up. The problem is that a lot of organizers, especially they get a little bit discouraged because let's say that you have a meet up that that was very successful before COVID, during COVID 2
years, no meet up, right? So the community doesn't grow and actually shrinks because you know, many of the people may move away or whatever it is. And then you go back, you do your first meet up after COVID and you used to have like 70 people show up and now you have eight. You're like, OK, so you might feel like you've lost it all. I believe that if you bring like back a certain cadence, a certain regular cadence, I think that's one of the most important things about meet ups in general.
Things come back, things come back. I've seen that in Paris where I moved right now. As I moved to Paris around a year ago, I started getting involved with the local meet up community and it was a little bit again, frozen due to COVID times. And the first meet up, there were not that many people. But then I, I tried to insist like, OK, let's do one meet up per month, more or less. It was helping me to get integrated into the local community to get to know local
companies as well. So there was this nice mix of like community and also networking with like the French ecosystem, you know, and a little by little it's, you know, the first meet up, like not that many people. Second meet up a little bit more and then you start seeing like the regulars, how I call them the regulars, like people have come to the meet up every time and that's, and that's amazing, you know, because these people like the, yeah, after, after
COVID, they're still there. They show up all the time. They come to you and they say, hey, thank you for organising. It was really interesting. We appreciate all the effort that you're putting into this. And yeah, for me, it's just a great feeling. So just circling back, I, I've been rambling a lot, you know, but but yeah, COVID definitely didn't help. I still feel like people look
for social interactions. It's it's a little bit more tricky right now because, you know, if you work remotely the whole day, then in the evening, just getting out of the house to go on to a meet up. Yeah, I, I, I can understand some people don't just don't feel like going, but I feel like people need more and more like to meet with other to other, yeah, to meet in this kind of settings. Let's put it this way, especially after COVID, but it
has been, yeah. I feel like it's also, it's also about insisting creating a certain regularity in meet ups and these kind of community events. I think that helps a lot. Like not not having like, OK, we do a meet up now and then the next one is in four months, then we have another one in one year. Trying to be regular rather less but regular then more but spread all over the place. Have you experimented with digital communities as well?
Because I, I know a few people that host meetups here and I don't know if they have experimented with it, but it's definitely been a thought with regards to, let's say, the Beyond Coding podcast to interact with people more and more. The only interaction I have, and that's more so on LinkedIn is the Q&A aspect of these episodes. Because every, every now and then I ask, OK, let's do another Q&A episode.
Do you have any questions? And based on that, that little interaction actually gives me a lot of fulfilment. I'm wondering if I can do more because I've seen Slack communities, I've seen Discord groups, and have you experimented with any of those? That's a good question. I'm I'm in a couple of Slack communities and also Discord communities. I feel like they're interesting and I get a lot of value out of some of them, but but they lack the human touch, right? They lack the human touch.
We are social animals at the end of all right, So it's I feel like this human touch is important. I see them more as, yeah, place where I go and there are other people that have the same ideas and the same problem they might have. But you know, it's it's tricky to create an actual friendship there. It's tricky to create an actual a deep, you know, a friendship pretty much. And and yeah, This is why I tend to prefer like a non digital community.
In your case, it's a little bit different because, you know, you have an audience in a meet up or in a community, like everyone is on the same. How can you say that Like everybody's on the same? It's not we, we don't build a community around the podcast, right? Everybody that is in a, in a meet up can just come and give their own presentation and expose their own topic, which is something that you know, for a podcast is a bit more one way.
Let's put it like this, even though your audience can ask you Q&A questions and so on, it's your the mic pretty much every time. So it's a little bit different. I get that. But yeah, it's, I think it's, it's interesting, like digital communities are, are definitely growing up, but I still feel like there is a lot of value in having a community that meets regularly and, you know, just looks at each other in the face around there. Yeah, I like that. That's something I definitely
miss. That's why maybe I was thinking of either than these digital communities or maybe I should just do something in person and see if that's actually. I think if you would organize, I mean, now I don't know the demographic of you know. There's a lot of US, you have to go there. Yeah, yeah. I don't know where your if your listeners are, mostly from the Netherlands or from Europe in general, but I think you could think about organizing like an event or.
Something like this. Maybe I'll try that out. That could be interesting. Yeah, very interesting. I, I never really reflected on that, but this concept of community and also in combination with personal branding has gotten a lot more attention. Like within companies. I know know companies, but I also know specific people working at those companies and I
know who they are. And if they move from company to company, then all of a sudden I know the next company they work at because they have such a personal brand. And all of a sudden it just speaks to me. Or I followed them on LinkedIn or that content always kind of hits with me. Do you actively or did you actively also work around your personal branding consciously, or is that kind of a byproduct of the things that you're always interested in? A mix of the two.
I've, I've always been interesting in community and bringing people together. Yeah, this has always been part of my of my character a little bit, but there is definitely a side of it that came especially when I turned into freelancing. 100% right. You need to build your own personal branding in a way or another. And I'm not I'm really not good at like sharing things on Twitter and this kind of stuff like I, I'm not good at it. I've tried several times. I go like on a, you know, one
month strike. Oh, that's good. I post every day and then just one day I forget and it's gone. It's. Gone. I have the same, Honestly, yeah. I tried so hard, there's so many ways and it just never worked out. But yeah, it's a mix of the two. I like just getting to know people in general. I think it's, it's obviously especially, you know, as they move from one culture to another, see how people do things differently and also how companies do things differently. I think it's very interesting.
But yeah, part of it is also building my own personal brand, which when you're when you're a freelancer is particularly, it's particularly interesting and it's very important. I feel like it's part of the, it's part of the game that you're playing. Yeah. Can you be a freelancer at the end of the day nowadays without having, let's say, a good personal brand? Because I wonder how that would work if people can't really find
you. But then I've also worked with people that are really, really good and you have zero social media and just people know them just by how do you say that? Mouth to mouth marketing, basically. I think you can do that if you want. It might be a maybe a little bit more tricky to find out new projects and so on. But you know, right now the same way you have recruiters for like full time position, you also
have recruiters for freelancing. It's just that when you yeah, when you don't have your own personal brand, when you don't have your own, yeah, when you don't show what you're doing outside, you might have to rely on them a little bit more, right. So you might have to, you know, rely on them for your next project or for your next gig a little bit more. Instead, when you build your own personal branding, which again takes a lot of effort, you need
to like doing it as well. Yeah, these kind of things come a little bit more natural then, you know, it's freelancing is really like this, right? There are, you have times where you get like 4 projects at the same time and you're like, oh, I don't know how to handle this. And then your project finishes and for the next two months, yeah, no, it looks like nobody is. Nobody is looking for freelancers anymore. Interesting.
I'm wondering also what your opinion is on this because now that I've I'm trying to start to go to more meet ups and also speak and trying to see on conferences and maybe apply here and there. I don't really know what my topics would be like. I have a trouble finding my voice even though I have a lot of interests. I find it hard to be like, OK, do I really want to give a talk on that? Am I really an expert in this Ave. And then prepare a conference
talk. For example, how did you find, let's say this, this set of topics that you'd like to cover or talk about? Because I know it's in the cloud native space, but I also know you love the people aspect and a community aspect. I generally don't think you need to be an expert like, you know, I don't think you need to be like people go to a conference, like they go to speak at a conference and they think I need to be able to answer any possible questions I'm getting for the audience.
And that's just impossible. It's just not true. So very often what I do, and this also goes back to how I learn, sometimes I even submit like talks to a conference to software that may be of, you know, like a software I maybe don't really know perfectly. And this forces me to learn to test it and to spend some time on it before the conference.
And, and I think this has worked out pretty well a couple of times because, you know, it forces you to say, OK, now I have this conference talk about this topic, which is like a proof of concept of a certain, you know, like a data pipeline or whatever that may be. And I said that I would do it using this tool that I know so and so, but I would like to know more about it. And so, you know, during my conference talk and during the preparation, I need to actively
spend time and, and learn this tool and understand all the intricacies of it and so on. And at the end of the conference, there are all kind of talks, right? You go like from like the beginner talks, but just like more of these kind of talks, like an intro to a certain topic into a certain tool and more like advanced talk where you really instead go, OK, let's go deep into like the Linux kernel and whatever. I don't feel comfortable in this
second part. If I feel good in the in the beginner talk, like showcasing a new a new software that I think it's interesting, I bring some value, I would just submit a beginner talk and that's it. And I feel like it's always nice to start from like smaller realities, right? So doing giving a talk in front of a meet up is a lot less intimidating that giving a talk in front of 400 people at a conference that are paying, you know, like a ticket to go there,
right? In a meet up, people come without too many expectations, right? They see the list of the talk, they see that something is interesting. They go there if they like it, amazing. If they don't like it. Yeah, I'm, I'm sorry. We did our best kind of thing. You got to please everyone. In a conference, expectation are higher, right? People go there because they expect to get something out of it. They pay a ticket price. And so, you know, you need to be
a little bit more. This is why there is a whole CFP process. This is why there are multiple people reviewing the CFP, because you need to at least match those expectations with the meet ups. The expectations are not, you know, they're not super high. So you need to provide some quality talks. You need to provide some value to your audience.
But yeah, I mean, we are definitely open to like first time speakers for example, because it's, you know, it's, it's a nice stage to just get started into public speaking. I like that a lot. Then you kind of build an anchor and then once you get approved either at a meet up or at a conference, then you start kind of exploring this topic and it's less of a, let's say, advanced expert view, more of an
introductory. This is what I think or this is what I found in kind of X looking into this tool. I don't really, I didn't really think that those talks, I mean, I, I've seen them in the past and I've been a bit out of the scene lately. I didn't know those talks still existed because there's a lot of content online nowadays that would give you exactly that for people's own time. So I didn't know those, can they still compete, let's say with
online content? Because usually online content nowadays is actually qualitatively really gone up. It, it is, it is There are people that simply don't consume it, right? I'm sure there are people that listen to this podcast just in the audio format. And I'm sure there are other people that consume this podcast only in the video format. So it's also about the delivery, right, The way you deliver it. And this is the important part.
Like people say, OK, I don't have, you know, I need to give a, a conference talk only about topics no one knows about. And, and it's just not true because there, first of all, there is always somebody that doesn't know what you, what you already know. And there are people who just want to hear it in a different way. Maybe they start experimenting with a tool, but they just, you know, follow the first three or four steps of the quick start guide. Let's put it this way.
And instead you go there, you show them, yeah, all the steps of this quick start guide and those like a more complex use case or how it interacts with other software. For example, there's also very common practice for a, for a conference talk, you focus on one-on-one on one specific software, but also on the interaction that it has with, you know, the rest of the infrastructure desk to their ecosystem. And those old talks are always
very interesting. But yeah, in terms of like the media, I, I don't worry too much about that, to be honest. And again, like, it's when I submit a talk, I always think it's not my job to judge if this talk is good for this conference. It will be the conference organizer telling me, a we think your talk doesn't fit, a we think your talk is great, then you should do it. So I just submit it. I and and I see what happens
this way. That's a great perspective because honestly, that's what withholds me, that I try to be the judge and there are other people that should be the judge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Other people do it. It's you. You would be surprised sometimes. Sometimes I submitted talks. They fought where, you know, so and so maybe not that valuable. And at the end it just worked out. My first talk is that's I will not tell the whole story, but
it's pretty long. But like my the first talk I gave the one in back in October 2013, it was basically the the report of my summer internship, a three month summer internship. And on the stage with me, there were two people very well, it was a conference back in Italy, two people that are very well known in the Italian open source community. OK, so pretty much on stage, there was me like a 23 year old student out of Bachelor presenting the result of his
three months internship. And two people that have their own Wikipedia page. Like one of them was like has been a Debian project leader for like several years. The other one has been involved with like the Wikimedia Wikipedia's page forever. And you know, there you feel the imposter syndrome. But still, there were people at the conference that came to me and they were like, hey, I, I feel what you did was cool. I think it was very interesting.
I liked your talk very much. But you know, like when you're on a stage like this, it's yeah, you, you should not think about this thing too much. Just submit it. And yeah, it's, it's not your job to judge your to judge your talk. There is, there is a committee for that. There is a call for paper exactly for that. I can really see how that experience helped with that perspective when you have giants next to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's really cool. It was.
Yeah, it was a, it was a crazy experience, but it was, it was fun. It was fun and definitely helped me out to, you know, get out there a little bit more. Nice, I've really enjoyed this conversation, kind of going over why freelancing in the 1st place. Also the non romantic part. I really appreciate you sharing that as well. When it's probably the right time or when it's not the right time also for you as a person. And then you're bonding with community and personal branding
in your journey there. Is there anything still you want to share before we round off? I didn't expect this. No one does. I always do it but you. Tricked me. I would say in general, let it be freelancing, let it be public speaking, let it be your career.
You should just give it a shot. And we are lucky enough, like, you know, your, your podcast is targeted through to people that work mainly around tech to work in an industry that is very lucky, you know, in an industry that is very, you know, there is, there is a lot of work, there is a lot of jobs out there. There is a lot of opportunities out there. And so getting, you know, rolling back to what you had before, it's most of the time
not difficult. So my idea, the message to want to get out is just give it a shot, give it a try and don't be afraid of failure. Don't be afraid of failing because like failure is subjective, right? It's a, it's a failure only if you think it's a failure. And sometimes, yeah, we we beat ourselves up a little bit too much. I love that it's a failure only if you think it's a failure. Yeah, that's great. Then I'm going to round it off here.
Thank you so much for listening. If you're still with us, leave some love in the comment section below. Check out Andrea. I'll put all his socials in the description as well. And with that being said, thanks again for listening. We'll see you on the next one.