 To introduce our first keynote speaker, this is very exciting for me. We have Lucy Bain coming all the way from Sydney. Lucy's an engineer at Atlassian. She is also one of the organizers for the Women Who Code group in Sydney, Rails Girls, and has done a number of other community outreach programs. Could you please join me in giving a huge round of applause? Lucy Bain, everyone. I moved to Sydney three years ago, sight unseen. This is literally my first view of the city. Now I moved with my partner, but I didn't have any friends there. So when I got there, I decided to go to meetups. Lots of meetups. Now I went to these events, but I still struggled to meet people. I struggled to have interesting conversations with them. Instead, I had those circular conversations of where do you work? Where do you live? What do you do now? On to the next person, over and over. To be honest, I wasn't very open with them. I would let them do the talking and then kind of fizzle out into awkward silences. And I would leave these events feeling drained and frustrated. This all culminated about a year later with my sitting in this park crying because I didn't have any friends. I felt useless and broken. Normal people can make friends. I'd made friends in the past. What was so wrong with me? So after I got sad, I got angry. And I decided that I needed to do this a slightly different way. So my first change was to go to the events that I actually enjoyed. And at these events, I would volunteer for anything. You needed somebody to get there early and check people's names off. I was your girl. You wanted somebody to stay late and stack chairs? Sure, I could totally be there. Because I was at these events constantly and for so long, people started to recognize me and remember me. It also meant that I had time to ask them questions, something more interesting than just where do you work, but what language do you use? Why do you like that? Tell me a bit more. As I became more confident and outgoing, I was better able to make friends. Having friends made me more confident and outgoing. It was this great, positive cycle. Now, eventually, some of these groups that I was part of needed new leaders. Their leaders had moved away or burnt out. It was just time for a change. And so they asked me if I would step up. I had obviously proven that I was really interested in doing this kind of stuff, because I was there all the time. Now, I get to run these meetup events. And I love it. I hope that I help other people reach out and connect with one another, which is what I'm here to ask you today. What's holding you back from connecting with others? Now, this comes in three levels for the purposes of this talk, at least. First, there's this base level. These are these one-on-one connections, those conversations you have with individuals at meetup groups or these friendship groups that you have. This is where you need to start reaching out beyond yourself. For me, at this level, I was being held back by shyness. So that's what we'll talk about here. Then, there's this community level. Now, I'm going to be talking mostly about programming communities, because it's what I have the most experience with and what we have in common. But if you're part of other communities or school groups, hopefully these lessons will apply as well. At this level, most people are intimidated by showing up at all. We talked about how it was difficult to go and meet these roomful of strangers. And I definitely get that. People who are there are often intimidated to give talks. So that's what we'll be talking about both of those in this section. Then, there's leaders. Now, I think of leaders as really just the most active members of the community. I don't think that they're particularly special. But the connections that the leaderships have is a little bit different. It's not so much about connecting more with your members as about facilitating your members connecting with one another. And on this level, most people feel that they don't know how to start. Or if they do have an idea about how they want to start, they lack the confidence to do so. So we're covering both of those as well. I've done it all. It has been a long journey for me, for being shy, to being able to stand here in front of you today. I've worked hard to move past these barriers that I've had for myself. But I'm here today standing in front of all of you because of these efforts. Being part of these communities has been a fantastic experience for me as I hope it has been for you too. I encourage you to push your boundaries when connecting with one another, to become more active and friendly members of your communities, and, if you're willing, to play a leading role for them as well. So let's start on that base level, those one-on-one connections that really lay the foundation. So in year four, I was introduced to my fellow student as shy. And at the time, I was really indignant about this. I wasn't shy. What's this teacher talking about? I just never talked to people I didn't know because they were scary. And I always had a book in my backpack ready to go for a quiet moment, or so I could just ignore the people who were trying to talk to me. And during recess, I wrote short stories about cats. But I wasn't shy. She was crazy. Looking back, my teacher was totally right. I was absolutely shy. Now before we get too involved with my awkward adolescent years, let's get a few things straight. I'm going to be talking about four main personality traits, shy, introvert, outgoing, and extrovert. Now while some of these are often used interchangeably, they're actually different. And it's important that we note those differences now. So shy is being reserved or tibboned around others, whereas outgoing is being friendly or socially confident with others. An introvert is somebody who gets their energy from being alone, whereas an extrovert is someone who gets their energy from being with others. Now these definitions are definitely simplified. If you'd like to talk more in depth about that, I'd love to chat with you after. But they'll be good enough for us for this talk. Now it's possible to fall into any one of these four quadrants, and I know people in all of them. And while I've drawn it with really hard lines like this, it's actually more of a sliding scale. You can kind of fall anywhere in this area. Now fun fact, if you don't quite identify as an extrovert or an introvert, you might be what's called an ambivert, which is somebody who falls right in the middle. So in 1967, the University of London did a study where they took a bunch of babies and they put a little bit of lemon juice on their tongue and they measured the baby's response rate. So did they really freak out about things or were they kind of like, no, that's annoying, but whatever. Then when these babies grew up, they gave the kids a personality test to find out if they were introverts or extroverts. So, hands up if you have heard of this study before. Oh, that's pretty good, sweet. Hands up, if you think the babies who freaked out were extroverts, cool. And now, hands up if you think the babies who freaked out were introverts. All right, pretty split, that's good for me. So the babies who had a stronger reaction grew up to be introverts. Even as babies, they experienced the world more strongly than their extroverted counterparts. This is one of the reasons that introversion and extroversion is so common on personality traits. It's because it's extremely consistent throughout your life. On the flip side, being shy and outgoing is much more variable. In fact, most people experience profound shyness in their toddler years, where they're cowering behind their parents' legs. Or maybe you were really outgoing, experienced an emotional trauma, and now you're much more reserved than you were. This can even be situational. Some people are really comfortable talking with their coworkers, but really nervous about talking to a sales clerk. Or maybe you feel more comfortable giving your speech to a roomful of strangers than a handful of your good friends. Now these four traits can have a big impact on how you connect. We'll take a moment though. If you don't feel held back by your shyness, that's fantastic. I am not here to tell you that you have to change. I'm here to offer my experience and see if it's something that maybe you can benefit from. So, back to my story. As a child, I didn't feel particularly held back by my shyness. I had one good friend a year, but I wasn't jealous of my classmates' better social abilities. To be honest, I probably wasn't aware of my classmates' better social abilities. I was pretty awkward, and it was working for me. I was okay with that. Until I wasn't. I was in high school when I had this moment of realization. It was a very American high school. We literally had the red lockers and red and white tile floors, but I suddenly realized that I was feeling really isolated. I looked around this hallway and I saw all my other classmates chatting amongst themselves, laughing, having conversations, and I realized that I had held myself back from those connections. I'm not sure why I realized it so distinctly in that moment, but that's the moment that I really remember, that I decided that I wanted to change. Now, I had been shy my whole life and I knew I wasn't gonna just suddenly be outgoing, so I decided to start small. Really small. I started with smiling. And yes, it probably was about that awkward because I would forget that I needed to smile sometimes and I kind of go into my thing and then, oh, I'm so sweet smiling now, ah! And I would just do my normal thing of looking at the floors, I'm walking along, and remember that I need to be smiling, so I'd just be standing there smiling at the floor. Okay, well that got a bit weird, so I knew I needed to start looking up when I was smiling. Well now I'm looking up, making eye contact with my classmates as I walk down the hall and they started to greet me. So I'd say, hi, Lucy. I'd be like, hey, person. And that was awkward too. So I had to start learning their names. This smiling thing had way more of a snowball effect than I expected it to and that really worked for me. So I decided that I needed to start setting tiny goals, little things just like smiling a little bit more. I needed to ask more questions in class even if those questions felt stupid or I needed to strike up a conversation with a classmate even though I didn't know that much about them. These little things built up and I made it a point early on to celebrate any little win I had. If I remembered to smile, that was a win. If I asked a question in class when I normally wouldn't, that was a win. I knew that I was going to be constantly challenging myself little by little and I needed all of the positive reinforcement that I can get. At the time, I talked to some of my friends about this project of mine and while they could see that it was something I was interested in, they asked if I was doing it for the right reasons. Was I faking this outgoing self of mine? And if that's how you feel it's understandable, I can see where you're coming from. The way that I view it though is that nobody's ever 100% themselves to everyone they meet all of the time. I show a different facet of myself to my mom than I do when I'm doing a code review with my coworkers. Everybody has all of these different little versions and they're no less me than any other version I would show. This outgoing self, I had been too afraid to show her previously but I was pushing myself to do that. I wanted to connect with other people and so I pushed these boundaries. All of this work that I had done to be more outgoing meant that I can do the community work that I do now. This confidence that I was gaining by celebrating those wins and being more and more outgoing meant that I could show up. I could start giving talks and I could eventually start leading these communities. I generally don't feel as held back by shyness although it does still get me sometimes but this means that I'm now better able to participate. Now just like being shy, you don't have to start suddenly being involved just because I'm here telling you that I think it's a great thing. But if you feel that you're being held back from participating, if you feel like you want to join in but that you just don't really know how to get started, I think that's a problem and I'm here to talk to you if that's how you feel. So participating can be scary. You talked earlier about how you show up and there's this room full of strangers and oh my goodness, where do you even start? I have been there, I totally, totally get that. I moved to San Francisco after university and there are all these great tech meetups there. Like I should go to those, right? Except I was pretty convinced that any of those meetups was gonna be full of Stanford grads or Googlers or elite hackers like I wasn't and then I was gonna show up and it was gonna be super awkward. I didn't feel that I was gonna belong that I would be good enough to be there. Looking back though, I wish I had gone. When I moved to Sydney, I did start joining in those communities and I found them to be so supportive, so welcoming of me. I wish that I had taken that first step and shown up to those community events in San Francisco and just given them a shot. So if that showing up step for you is difficult, please take one little leap of faith and show up and see how it goes for you. Now that doesn't mean you have to show up at really big events. You can go to whatever events work for you. Maybe you can go to a smaller group and take a friend with you or you can go to those small groups often and make friends there and take them with you to the bigger events. Wherever it is that you are, find something that works for you. If you're feeling settled in your community, start being welcoming. Remember the first time that you attended and how difficult that was for you or if you are just naturally more outgoing and it wasn't difficult for you, think about how difficult it was for me and reach out to people. Look around for people who are standing alone and invite them into your conversations. Look for that person standing right up against the wall who's staring just a little bit too intently into their drink. They probably want to join in. Some groups are really good at this and they make an effort to reach out to people. You can actually see the difference in your groups. Those little clusters of people, are they staying the same for the whole night or are they ebbing and flowing because people are joining and dropping out and coming into different conversations? And those people who are standing at the edge of the room staring into their drink, are they there for the whole night or are they there just for a few minutes until they're brought in? Think about the communities that you're from and how welcoming they are. What can you do to change this? Now you can definitely still talk with your friends. When you go to these events, I'm not saying you now can only ever talk to the new people. One of the big reasons that I go to community events is so I can catch up with the people I've met there. But if you need to duck out or have that one-on-one chat with somebody, make a really quick introduction. It doesn't take long, but I've met a lot of fantastic people through this and I'm grateful for everybody who's taken those few moments to introduce me to someone else. All right, so you're showing up at your community events, you're getting more active, you're feeling comfortable there. Your next step is to start giving talks. So one of the things that holds people back from giving talks is that, like me, you might believe that everyone already knows what I know. I know this makes no sense at all, but it's definitely something that I tend to believe that if I've learned this new concept like yesterday, suddenly the whole world learned that new topic with me as well. And in fact, this is pretty common. A lot of people tend to feel this way, that you maybe don't have anything to offer. But the thing is, at some point in your life, you probably learn something, right? Hopefully. Whatever it is that you've spent time to learn, you can pass that on to somebody else. When I'm trying to think of a talk or a blog post idea, I ask myself, what would Lucy of three years ago wanted to know? How could I have helped her get to where I am now just a little bit faster? Or maybe if I've been struggling with a topic and just trying to figure this new thing out, I can ask myself, what would Lucy of yesterday wanted to have known? What's the talk or blog post that she could have gone through and saved herself all that time and struggle? Because the thing is, you're probably not a snowflake. Sorry. At some point, you've struggled with something. You've put time and effort into learning it. And chances are, somebody else is struggling with that same thing. So you can share what you've learned and save them some time. My example for this was when I was learning Git. Now, I was in uni when I learned Git. I got through that one assignment that one time and kind of just hoped that I was never gonna use it ever again. Yeah. That's pretty much how that went down. Eventually, I did actually need to know it from my job and I had a pretty bad time of learning it. Their commits and branches and all these different things that I was supposed to be knowing and there were some reset hards just to check if things were working, they did. But I learned more and more about Git and it turned out that I actually really enjoy it. And so I wrote a talk about it. Learning for me was so difficult at first that I wanted to save somebody else some of that pain. Now, this talk that I wrote is aimed at people with zero experience. If you've been working with Git for like a week, it's totally useless, don't even bother. But if you're new, it's actually pretty helpful. I've given this talk to probably 10 groups who are at the right level and it's always been really amazing to me to see how they understand things better after. It's particularly enjoyable when I get to do the workshop afterwards and can see them using these new topics right away. So you can find relevant topics because whatever it is that you're interested in is probably relevant for other people. I recently did a survey to find people who used to attend community events but hadn't gone in a while and I asked them why they weren't attending anymore. One of the most common reasons was that they didn't feel that the talks were relevant or pitched at the right level for them. Now, this kind of blows my mind because it's almost always the members who give the talks. So if you wanna have a talk on a particular topic, you can give that talk and it'll be super relevant for you and pitched at just the right level. By doing this, you can slowly change the kind of talks that are expected for this group and the level that is expected as well. Because if you're interested in something, chances are so are the other people in your community. So, ready for the next step? This is about leadership. Last year, I ran a JavaScript study group and I made exactly the group that I wanted. We met once a week so that we would have this accountability and I wouldn't just not do my homework. We had demo time so we could show off the work we had done and I couldn't just say that I had done my homework and hadn't really done it. We had question time in case we had had difficulty with any of the things that we were supposed to be getting through and I was even able to get some tutors to come in from the community. People who probably wouldn't have been willing to give up their Monday nights to help just me. This group worked for me and so it worked for other people as well. I'll let you in on a little secret. I'm involved in the community because I'm actually pretty selfish. I run events for my own benefit. This study group was because I wanted to learn JavaScript. I want these groups to exist for me. I'm pretty selfish and that's made me much more generous with my time. I think selfishness can be a good thing. When you're leading, that means that you are in control with how the group goes. You get to decide on the topic and on the structure. Now I talked about picking topics before and how you're probably not a snowflake so if you're interested, other people are too. But how does that structure work? I've attended or organized a lot of events and so I've gotten a bit opinionated about what I like. For example, I don't particularly like book clubs because I find that they get off topic a lot and tend to waffle and I do like the forced interaction. I'm looking forward to these dinners that are coming up because it makes you connect with people and it helps me overcome my shyness. So think through what event structures do you like? Do you like the free flow of conversation that maybe gets a bit more off topic but encourages discussion? Or maybe do you like the efficiency of knowledge sharing that lectures can provide? Do you need more time to reflect so you can really absorb what you're learning? Where do you fit on things? As a leader, you are in control and you can choose what structure works best for you. So take a minute to think about some past community events you've been to and what kind of events did you prefer? Okay, so hands up if you prefer small groups over large groups and hands up if you prefer seminars or lectures over workshops. Yep, hands up if you want homework versus no homework. Okay, a few hands, more than I was expecting. Any of these has their merits, right? There's pros and cons to each of them and as the leader you get to pick exactly which merits you are the most interested in. Some people say that they feel guilty making these choices and making these selfish decisions. They ask, should they be talking with their members to see which topics their members are interested in or which format they most prefer? These people are held back by their uncertainties and this guilt of feeling selfish. I tend not to have this problem as much because I just admit that I'm really selfish and move forward but I understand where people are coming from and I have two answers for this. One is that planning takes time and so you and your members make a trade-off. You put in more time on the organizing side of things and you make an event that fits you a little bit better. They put in less time and they can show up and maybe the event doesn't fit them quite so well but the thing is if everybody has the choice to lead they are always making that trade-off and if they didn't feel that the event fit them well enough well they could lead and make the choice that way so I don't think it's that bad. The other way to look at it is that if you have chosen to lead you have to step up and lead. You can check in with your members I'm not saying it's like a dictatorship and I certainly run a lot of surveys just to kind of get the pulse but you can keep moving going forward. You don't have to verify every little thing. Because who is the best person to give a talk to run an event or do any of it? You are. If you've offered to do it, if you've stepped up then you are the best person to do this. Sure, there might be somebody in the room who is actually better qualified than you but if they're not stepping up that makes you the best person. So if you can internalize this it is a massive confidence-based. You don't need to check in about every little thing. You don't need to ask permission to change the food for the night. You don't need to feel bad about these selfish decisions that you're making. Because if anyone can lead and you're doing it that means you are the best person for that job. So after that nice little confidence trip you're getting past that imposter syndrome you're ready to start leading. How do you start? Well first off I recommend that you don't start with a conference, right? This is a lot of work. I am really glad that I have not been doing all of this work. Thank you very much. You can start small. I actually think that small events can be particularly helpful for introverts. Makes it a little bit easier I think for them to open up a bit. And when we raised our hands earlier a lot of people said that they liked small events as well. And as we previously talked about going to large meetups can be intimidating for a lot of people. So these small groups make it a bit more accessible. I was really overwhelmed and intimidated when I joined Atlassian. There are like 600 people in the Sydney office alone when I joined. The biggest company I'd ever worked for before was like 30 people. This was a big change for me. There were 30 people on my team. It's just a bit crazy. I knew that I needed a smaller community within Atlassian that I could really connect with. So I was selfish and I made the group that I wanted. It took a bit of trial and error but what I ended up with was coffee dates. So for coffee dates people would opt in and you get paired up randomly with one other person from the group and you're asked to take 30 minutes out of your week and go and get coffee with that person. This takes extraordinarily little organizing. You've got a list of people, you've got a randomizer and you send out one email a week and that's it. It's great, it's fantastic. Definitely recommend. And I've met a lot of interesting people this way. It means that I've connected with people who I wouldn't necessarily have met in my normal working life and who weren't necessarily on my team. Atlassian feels a lot smaller to me now even though we've grown because I've made these connections around the office. Now the other way to look at it is that I wanted to connect and I made coffee dates but other people wanted to connect as well. They signed up. HR wasn't telling them that they really should do this because you're meeting people and you need to and I wasn't harassing them, saying please, please, I need friends like sign up. I made the list available and if they wanted to sign up, they signed up. My needs were not unique. I wasn't a snowflake, I made this community happen and other people wanted it too. These tiny events, events with just two people can still be useful. All right, well let's go a little bit bigger than just two people. We'll start with small groups. Things like the dinner groups for tonight that are sort of eight to 10 people. I think those are a little bit smaller. At Atlassian, I was lucky enough to be part of mentoring rings. I didn't run them but I was one of the members and I really enjoyed my time there. For our mentoring rings, we met every two weeks for about an hour and we discussed whatever we as a group were interested in. We have a short presentation and the mostly discussion after that. We had talks on things like assertiveness or working in teams, negotiating pay rises, things that we had said we were interested in. Now for a group like this, you don't need to be a bouncy and exciting emcee. It's a small group and the group works because it's small. We could have really open and honest conversations with each other. Really honest conversations. We had this deep trust with one another and this facilitated our relationships. We still meet for lunch about once a month even though the group's been finished for probably about a year now. This small group was able to do big things because of these connections we've had with one another. All right, tiny events, small events, slightly larger events. It's getting a little bit more intimidating though and that is pretty reasonable. Most people when I talk to them about maybe trying to run something, feel intimidated. They feel under qualified. They tell me, well, other people run events. Not me, but other people. And somehow it seems like nobody ever expects to do their first event. Everybody just jumps into doing their fifth event. I'm not sure how they get there, but by magic you never really need to do the first one. When I moved to San Francisco, I wanted to do a Python programming course through Udacity online. And I knew that most people don't finish these courses. I thought it was a shame that Udacity didn't put together some kind of groups for us. They didn't have accountability partners maybe or somebody who would check in on us. I felt like they should organize this. Not me, but them. But as I said, I ended up running that JavaScript study group and I realized that actually I could do this. Even as a student, even as somebody wanting to attend the group, I could organize it. And this study group meant that I actually stuck with that program and I didn't drop out of it like I did out of the other course. And I learned a lot. I actually have a job as a front-end developer now because of things that I learned in this course. So you don't need to be special to run events. I was just some person who wanted this thing to exist and I made that happen. It's not that I had special knowledge about JavaScript or really any of it, I just went for it. Anyone can get started because you're probably the best in the room. If you're willing to do it, you definitely are the best in the room for it. You don't have to start big, but you can start wherever you are. You even don't need to have all of the skills. You can always work with other people who have the skills that you're missing. When I started running events, I didn't like being the emcee. I didn't like standing up in front of everybody and telling them what to do. So instead, I worked with an outgoing friend of mine. I would plan the event and then he would bring the energy. We worked together as a team to make good events from the both of us. As leaders, you don't need to have all of the skills. We worked together to make great events or just passable events. To be honest, I have never run a perfect event. I opt for agile organizing. I learned from my mistakes and I take on the feedback that I get from other people as well. Slowly and slowly, I hope that my events get a little bit better each time because you don't need to run a perfect event for it to be effective. You just need to run something. Leading has been some of the most fulfilling community work that I've experienced and I have been surprised with how impactful it has been. I've helped with Rails Girls events which is day and a half long workshops for women who are new to programming. I've seen some of these attendees come back as mentors which is really nice and I've seen them come back as full-time programmers because they've gone on to pursue their learning in programming. I encourage everybody to run events that fit their needs to try more, to try to lead. So it's taken me a long time to be as outgoing as I am now. I've connected with a lot of people along that journey and I've learned from all of them as I've gone. I am proud of how much time I invested in myself. I'm more comfortable with who I am now today than I was before. I know that connecting can be challenging. I really, really get that. A lot of people feel held back by their insecurities or fear or shyness. But the thing is, this is changeable. You can overcome your shyness and I know that it's difficult but I really believe that it's worth it. As we learn not to hold back from one another, we can be more open. We can tell silly stories of staring at the floor and hope that it helps someone else. Then there's participating in your communities and by showing up, you help to change the community. And I know that just show up is difficult. I've been there, it's daunting. But I also have found that these communities can be incredibly supportive. And I'm grateful for all of the good experiences that I've had. So I encourage you to take that leap of faith and show up just once to some event and see how it goes for you. If you're already a community, part of a community, remember what it was like when you first showed up. Remember how scary that can be for people. Remember standing at the side of the room, not knowing where to go. And welcome these new people into your group. Help them join into your conversations because community is a group effort. And if you are a more active member, you can share your ideas by giving talks. Talk, shift how the group works. Talk, shift what is expected from this community. So pick topics that you are interested in because chances are other people will be interested as well. And if you're ready for that challenge, try leading. No matter where you start, even as that shy fourth grader, you can eventually get there and you can lead. If you don't think that you can come up with a topic, remember that you can be your own target audience. Run events for you, run whatever you're interested in because you're probably not a snowflake either. You can choose to lead because that makes you the best person for the job. If you're willing to step up, you get to make decisions, so go for it. And you can start small. You can even start with those tiny two-person groups, those coffee dates. You don't need to organize tons of people to run a useful event. I've learned a lot from my experiences with leading. I've learned from my fellow organizers and from my attendees. I've enjoyed all of these experiences, watching the community grow and seeing other people connect as well. I really encourage you to give leadership a try. As we break up for morning tea, please take a moment to connect with someone you haven't met before. You've got three days of networking, chatting, and learning ahead of you. How can you make the most from this time? And when you leave on Sunday, buzzing with these new ideas, consider how you can take them back to the communities where you come from. Through small leaps and pushing your boundaries, you can move past what held you back before. So connect, participate, and lead. Thank you.