 Oh, wow, we have an ad break on there. That is cool as hell. So now we come up and there's an ad. I think it's a, is it Taco Bell? Let's talk, there's a Taco Bell ad streaming on there right after I hit like start. And it's like 15, 30 seconds, that is cool as hell. I don't know if I'm gonna see any money off of this Taco Bell ad, but it'd be kind of cool because I'd rather have money from Taco Bell than like any of the product. But you know, that's just me because I did the test talk about it. Anyways, welcome to Solid State. My name is Tim Banks. I am here to have this show on behalf of the crowd native computing foundation. And since it is a CNCF function, we do have a code of conduct we go by and I'm pretty sure we're all familiar with what codes of conduct are. And it's be probably, you know, let's not run a foul of it unless you be thrown off the show or beaten up. With me, I have my dear, dear friend, Ashley Willis, formerly Ashley McNamara, developer relations and engineer extraordinaire. So good morning to you, Ashley. Oh, good morning to him. I know. Ashley, a recent mother again of a beautiful, beautiful little girl got what, three hours contiguous asleep? Not even? Three hours, continuous? No. Total, maybe. Yeah, total, total. So, no, Ashley and I go way back. I'm not gonna read her official bios because she's, it's long. She's done a lot of stuff. She's pretty awesome. But Ashley and I go back to object rocket days, slaving away in downtown Austin and just, you know, at an acquired startup. And it has been just an absolute pleasure to watch how far she has gone from those days. I guess about what, seven years ago now? Seven? Yeah. Yeah, that second office, though, was dope. 19, 19. No, no, yeah, that was, oh gosh. So just so everyone knows, like just a little history, so when we were first, when we were first in downtown, we were at a building called 300 West Six, was on Sixth Street in Austin, and that building was being slowly taken over by Facebook. And then Facebook paid us, I think they bought our lease out plus extra at a rate so high that we are, our next office was in the 19th floor, the entire 19th floor of the Frost building, which was at the time, the most expensive office real estate in the city of Austin and possibly the state of Texas. And that was a dope, we got murals, we got signs, we got, it was just, it was fancy free parking, and we were just clowning. I mean, we were just stuntin' on everybody in that place. And I loved it because we were owned by Rackspace. And so the other Austin Rackspace facility basically was terrible, it was awful, and nobody liked it. Yeah, it was like melvy. Yeah, it smelled bad. There was a lot of stuff going on there that was like, hey, we need security to escort us to our cars and everything like that. But so everyone tried to come to the Frost building and it was, yeah, we were exclusive. The parking was nice for events. Oh yeah. Like just rolling on a Saturday. Oh gosh, it was so nice. It was so nice. Well, that was the fringe benefit that was really overlooked because that was, I probably saved thousands of dollars in parking. By another thing. Sure, for sure. Yeah. But so I would like Ashley for you to tell me, because you've got two really awesome stories that kind of combined into one. First of all, you come from a non-traditional quote unquote tech background, right? Into tech. And then you also come from like, you've got three wonderful children. And I think Kylie, the first one was born when you were 17. Yeah. Ish, you know, not to give away your age. You know, Kylie's only 12. The after I was 17. Yeah, yeah, Kylie's only 12 years old. So, you know, it's just, I did the math right on that one, right? That's 29, right, 29. So, no. And so, you know, there, and I'm bringing this up only because there's been a lot of toss around with the abortion restrictions in the state of Texas. You know, there's been narratives going around that like, you know, teen pregnancy is like disastrous life in a thing and you never go out to anything after that, which I've seen enough in my life to know that that's not the case. But I do think it's important to talk about these stories. And there are a few other folks I know who have been teen mothers and have not only survived but thrived, but I really want Ashley to tell us because it's pretty awesome because, you know, circumstances around that and then moving from a non-traditional tech background in a tech. So, if you could give me like, give me a Twitter thread on that, if you could. Twitter thread. I'm working on three hours of sleep. So, if you could shoot questions at me during this, that would be helpful to help jog my memory. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I guess the, yeah, let's go with kind of what was your, if you can remember, like, what was your initial kind of like, what were people telling you? Like, I went to like, hey, I'm pregnant. And they were like, oh gosh. And, you know, this and this and this. Like kind of what was that reaction and what was your initial feeling about what your future was going to be like? I remember distinctly having a history teacher. So, for those that don't know, my daughter is half Turkish, born in Turkey. So she's a little citizen as well. And I remember my history teacher keeping me after class once and saying, hey, you know what? Like, I feel obligated to have a conversation with you. Have you considered adoption? And I was like, yeah, I don't know. I think I have a keeper. And he was like, I just think it's gonna be really hard life for you. There are people out there who can't have babies and would love to be able to raise your baby and give your baby a better life. And I remember going home and telling my parents about it. My parents were like, no, like, fuck that guy. Oh, hopefully I didn't break the photocon up there. But I remember thinking about it for a long time. Like, wow, like I could have given her up for adoption and she could have had possibly a better life. I remember thinking about that for a long time and I still remember it today. I would say that I was in a school of 200 kids from kindergarten to high school. So that school had been around for 50, 60 years, something like that. I was the only pregnant person in the history of that high school. So it was also kind of like an outcast in a sense. I remember like, kids not talking to me. I remember feeling super lonely around that time. And then when I moved back to the States, there were lots of teen moms. And so it was interesting to come back to the States and have that dynamic as well where I'm trying to give advice to other teen moms. But then not feeling like that was my crowd either. So where were you kind of feeling like, I imagine, yeah, it's tough coming back to the States and having that kind of culture shock initially, but also being around other teen moms. And you said that didn't really feel like your crowd. What do you think set you apart? I did too, because I had her so young, I wanted to also grow up. So it wasn't until I had Topher that I felt like I was a regular mom. Okay, I remember taking Kylie to kindergarten and I was like, oh, you're so young, oh, you're so young. Like I have experienced exactly the same as you. We're both dropping our kids off at kindergarten. You're not somehow better than me, more experienced than me because you're 29. So it's always been interesting because I've never felt like I've been able to connect with moms my own age or obviously older moms until I had Topher. No, I think that's interesting. I had, what I think, 10-year gap between my oldest and my 13-year-old and for me, it felt really like, oh, like, yeah, that kind of like, I mean, I had kids young, not at C's, but very early 20s. And then I had my last child when I was 42, right? 41, sorry. And so it feels completely different having that child. You know, when you're young and not that you know better or anything like that. It's like, not that life experience makes you more prepared for childhood, for parenthood, because I don't really think it does to a lot of extent, just having kids makes you more prepared for parenthood because no parent knows what they're doing when they have the first kid. I don't care how old you are. No, not at all. And I had my last one at 40, so I'd say that they're equally as hard, but for different reasons. Like she was falling yesterday and like dove to catch her and my body still hurts. Yeah. Like I woke up this morning like a truck hit me. I could have done that at 17 really easy. Well, I mean, the thing for me is at 41, like I can do the calculus in my head. I was like, what is she falling on? How far is she falling? Oh, she'll be fine. Let her fall, blop, you know? Whereas my 20s, I'm making that, I'm making that, you know, that diving catch. And I'm like, now it's like, oh, you know, I cut myself. I'm looking, it doesn't need stitches. It'll be fine. Just go wash it off, you know. Put some safety glue on it. Right. So I think that the parental experience more anything helps, but I do think you are right, like that whole thing. It's like you see somebody who's 29, 30, you know, I've got friends who are having their first kids, deep first kids, deep in their 40s. And you know, they'll be dropping that kid off for kindergarten when they're almost 50 and they're going to be bumping up against somebody who's in their early to mid 20s. And y'all are on the same foot, maybe not financially, like maybe not your stability. Like financial stability or like, you know, what they say where your station life is. But certainly as a parent, and I dare say a lot of times parents, parents who have to know some financial struggle, who people who have to get by are probably far more prepared for that kind of adversity that comes with child raising than people who've kind of been just kind of surfing and being career people all their lives. Not that it's not to slam that or not to diss that because it's hard in some way, but it's a different kind of hard. It's a different kind of suffering. Yeah, I've had kids when I haven't had two nickels to rub together and I've had kids when I've had like, I'm not going to take a trip unless it's first class. So it is different, but certainly I don't think I'm any much better as a parent in one situation than the other. Yeah, no, me either. The financial stability is certainly helpful, but yeah, I don't think I'm much different as a parent, for sure. So, you know, you've got Kylie, your young mom talked to me about what your, you know, how did you progress in professional development or education and going like that. How did that go for you and what did that look like? I barely graduated high school. I had to keep a couple jobs to pay for diapers. I was lucky that my mom was able to babysit during the day. I didn't have to pay for babysitter a daycare until she was in kindergarten, but holding down a job and not feeling like I had a choice plus school was hard for me. I'm also like 80, 80, 80, so I learned the things that I want to learn and really dive in. But if somebody says like, you have to go learn this. Like, do I? Do I really? So I had a photography career for a really long time. I dove into that. I don't know what the saying, what's the saying about doing something you love and it's not a job, right? What's the saying, Tim? Oh, it's like, you know, find the job you love and you'll never work a day in life, which is utter bullshit. It's crap. So I did that for about 10 years, hated it, but it was my sort of entry into tech. It turns out photographers, at the time were mostly just, you know, moms with a camera. And so they didn't know how to run a business, how to build a website, how to build a blog, how to make sure that either one of those things ranked on Google. So I was selling those services. They also didn't know how to process an image. So I was selling Photoshop actions and presets and it turned out that photographers were my target market instead of actual, like going out and finding clients. So that was my entry into tech. Again, working on three hours of sleep here. And I was lucky enough to find OpenStack and Open Source really early. I liked the vibe of those communities. And because I decided that I wasn't gonna go get a CS degree, I just didn't have the time. I had two young kids at the time. So I went to a bootcamp. And before I went to the bootcamp, I was actually hired at Objects Rocket. So I went, they said, we'll let you start late. Go to your silly little bootcamp and then, you know, start here. So I did that. And then I started at Objects Rocket. It's kind of history after that. And so, yeah, that's where we met. And I think it was interesting because you went right into, you know, developer relations and community management early, very, very early. And the thing that I remember about the most and seeing is that, that you were, I mean, you were learning tech. You were very, very savvy as far as when it comes to graphic design and stuff like that, but you had brilliant ideas about how to engage people in a place where, you know, objectively, you know, for the founders of Object Rocket, whom I adore, but they weren't always the most, that's what I'm looking for. Like when it comes to engaging people, sometimes they just kind of, it just didn't go well. You know, I think because they were experts, you have a different relationship with the community. You expect them to like fangirl over you and come to you and you're no longer going to them and seeking them, right? So the relationship is different. Yeah. And what I thought is that you brought, just brought brilliant ideas into that space that were, that we absolutely benefited from because you did not come from like a kind of standard tech background and you had a completely different perspective, right? And it was important and it made a huge difference, right? And how people were engaged and how we reached out and how we kind of embraced the community, right? Even how we just talk to our customers or how we engage with them, how we, you know, okay, let's go do this thing for them and they're all gonna love it. And I'm like, wow, they really did love that and less expensive than it would have been like because of those ideas that you had that came from, like I said, from a different perspective. And so I think that's one of the things when we have the inevitable discussion that we have every, whatever the cycle is about, what is DevRel? Is DevRel important, you know, what are non-traditional backgrounds mean and things like that is that people bring different perspectives on how to engage with people and what's important to talk about when people engage or what's important to listen to when people engage with that that is essential in getting diverse perspectives on how your product is used or how to build your product for other people because it is, I think that's one of the things that really taught me the importance of listening to people when they speak, especially if they're not a quote unquote expert on that field because a lot of the people that are gonna use your product are not the quote unquote expert in that field, right? Because they probably be working for us, not consuming our services and how to make those things usable for people who aren't the quote unquote experts in the field because yeah, like if the barrier for using your product is that you have to be an expert, no one's gonna ever use anything, like we're gonna have three people use anything and it's gonna be like selling arch Linux, you know, like it's just not. Well, I think when people are writing blog posts or documentation or any sort of technical content they're trying to prove how smart they are, right? I still struggle at ObjectRocket trying to get people to write blog posts that were easy for anyone to understand because everyone was like, I'm an expert, I could prove that I'm an expert. If I write 101 content, people won't respect me. So selling the idea that explain it like I'm five content is just as valuable as the other stuff was sometimes hard. And we had a small team at ObjectRocket as well. So I think sometimes I struggled and that wasn't the job I was supposed to have when I started. I ended up with that job because somebody quit and they were like, hey, you like to go to meetups, right? Do you want this job? Oh, and it comes with a small team. I had like one person under me at the time. Yeah, yeah, you had exactly one. Wasn't that Laura, Laura Jane? No, oh, I too. I had Laura and I had Nicky, you remember? That's right, Nicky, Nicky, yeah. And so now what was your original wall you got hired for? Remember, because I didn't even get to start it. I had like, she quit three weeks after I started. So I can't even remember, I just remember it was not well paid. So you went from small team at a, you know, an object rocket. How did you go from, how did you go from that? Right, give me that, what that leapfrog looked like career-wise from your first, would you say your first quote-unquote tech role was that, that role of object rocket to what you're doing now? It's not even hard to say, it's easy I guess. I remember I was sort of sick of object rocket after the founders left. It just wasn't the same anymore, right? So I remember like, we had lots of conversations about this in that 19th floor kitchen. I was interviewing, I think I interviewed with Heptio. That was the missed opportunity, sorry, Kevin. I also interviewed with, I don't remember, I interviewed with a couple of people and I was sort of down to Heptio and Pivotal. And my friend Andrew Clay Shaper ran a team at Pivotal. Bridget was on it and I was like, oh man, it'll be really cool to work with Bridget. And he's like, yeah, come on over here. Well, okay, well, you'll love it. You'll get to do relatively the same things that you're doing now, just without a team. And I was like, oh, it would be nice to not have a team anymore. It'd be nice to kind of be in IC again. So Pivotal ended up hiring me 10 weeks into that job. Microsoft came knocking and they were like, hey, you wanna come over here? And I was like, I don't know. I work with open source communities. That doesn't sound smart for me. They were like, no, it's like we've changed. And I was like, okay, prove it. So I went into that interview kind of like, kind of cocky about it. Like, oh yeah, prove it. And so they ended up doing that. And about a couple of months into the Microsoft job, I ended up with an open source team. And now I run all the language teams plus the cloud native team and the Linux team. It's around 37 people at this point. Please tell me that's not 37 directs. No. Oh God. I was gonna go beat somebody up from Microsoft for that in this case. No, it's eight directs. Okay, very, very much better. Now, what I think was interesting was around that time, it's like as you got in, people started noting that, again, that you did contributions to the community that had nothing to do with coding. Like I seem to remember a Gopher or something like that. And other kind of cool little things that you added to the community that had nothing to do with code that made the community much, much like, like think about it, like who remembers, like we all, I'm pretty sure I've seen the go-go first, like in the various creations you've made or something like that. And they're like, oh well, no, those are so cool. But it's like, no one thinks about like the notion behind creating this or like, why would you do that? Or is it a line of code? Is it this feature, is that feature? Yeah, sure, yeah. Those things are important too, but having that thing that sticks in your mind, like something as simple as a mascot or a logo, or just a cute thing to remind you or represent the community you belong to or contribute to, that's important. And those are things that, again, if you're not, if you're just a traditional kind of like CS band, things like that, you're probably not gonna think about it that way. You're probably not gonna maybe even be able to create the things like that or give them the vibrance and add them, add the right thing at the right time like you have. And I think that's super important. I remember like just seeing that and I was like, that is cool as hell. And everyone loves Ashley McNamara because she's brilliant, smart and talented because you are, right? But letting people see that in a way that has nothing to do with a number of commits you've made to GitHub or how many CVEs you've done or whatever the other arbitrary metrics we have to try and measure people's contributions. And seeing that for me and seeing this, as the kids say this glow up that you've had and have people give you the chance to be great and to see you seize that chance and really just really excel at it has just been amazing as a person in the industry and as your friend, it's been amazing to watch, right? You know, just I'm back here like, you know and to be full disclosure Ashley and I have, you know have had many, she's had many conversations in that 19 floor kitchen, over text, over whatever just about what's going on in each of those lives and it's just been really amazing to see. And what I think that the important thing that I have seen and that I've benefited from and I think that I'd like maybe you to touch on is like talk about someone that like you talk about somebody gave you an opportunity to do this thing, right? What were your concerns or apprehensions about the opportunities and like kind of what drove you to capitalize on that? And then like to pay it forward like now you're in a place how are you giving other folks those opportunities? Yeah, so I think the thing about me is I've never had an ego about the things I know or don't know. I've always contributed where I think I can contribute if it's stocks, if it's color, if it's design, whatever it is, whatever people need, I don't need to be the smartest person in the room. And in fact, I'd rather not be the smartest person in the room. I think like the latest team change that we had was I now have all of the language teams under me. That is an amazing opportunity. I know language communities, but I don't know JavaScript. I have a JavaScript team under me. They are a very high performing team. That was an opportunity for me but I had to lean on those experts in that team. I had to lean on that team lead. I can help drive strategy, but for technical decisions moving forward, that team lead is the one that I'm going to trust to make those decisions and I will back up those decisions. So I try not to pretend that I know what I'm doing because if I do, that team is gonna fail. So I have to be very clear about the things that I don't know and accept that, be okay with that and learn with them, but know who the expert in the room is and sometimes it's not me and that's okay. And I think that in tech, we're so eager to pretend we know more than we do, especially if we have a large following on Twitter. And that sucks with that, but I get the pressure, and then you ask how I pay it forward. I'm very passionate about people who are just starting. I know how hard it was for me. I think if I would have had different mentors or different advice, I would not have given that bootcamp $20,000 I didn't have, you know? So the latest thing I did was my nanny is a CS student. She's nannying for us during the summer and she goes back to school soon. She's 19 years old, she goes Java, she's brilliant, she's smart. So I tweeted like, hey, who has internships available for second year students? And now she's got a thousand followers on Twitter and lots of opportunities. I think that that's the beast I could do with the following that I have is help give people opportunities, especially people who are just starting out. Like she has a traditional experience with, you know, she's going through University of Washington, getting her CS degree, that's traditional, but she still needs help, especially after school. One of the things that I still contribute or not contributing, I still send to people is that you created a kind of like a guide or a compilation of resources for folks out there trying to learn things on their own. And it's on your GitHub page, which I think is brilliant. And it's awesome that you do that. If you haven't seen it, I'll post that up, make sure people see it because I do think, you said like you haven't updated in a while and sure, we can keep that curated, but you've done a massive amount of work to have that there. And it's helped a lot of people out. The other thing that I saw, the other thing that I really love that you did, I guess it was about a year and a half ago, it might've been just before the pandemic, I don't remember, but you just step back and it's like, you know what, I'm not gonna, don't contact me for talks, right? Here, you know, contact a person of color or something like that and more people who are more marginalized communities, please go ask them to talk, right? Which I think is fantastic. I mean, not that we don't need more women to talk and more women to represent, to be represented in talks and in panels and things like that, but for you to say like, yeah, I mean, like I'm the one who would also, you know, benefit from being white and I want more people who are marginalized to be able to have a voice and to be seen and represented, I think was really awesome, especially when you are in a field that you kind of like, you're gated on how many talks you give or how many things you write or things like that for you to say like, no, I want other people to have those opportunities. Like that's important. Like for me, as a man of color to say like, okay, you know, you see me, right? And you understand what we're going through. Where do you think the industry stands on having that kind of representative, especially in relative advocacy and those who are, you know, standing up and talking about the tech that people use? I did that because I noticed that I kept seeing the same people on stage. I already have a platform. I can speak to the void on Twitter and people are gonna listen. I don't need more. I'm not benefiting anymore by doing another talk. So I wanted to see different faces, faces I had not seen. I knew people wanted to be on stage. You can see it. People tweet about it. So when I decided to step back because I wanted to see different people, I wanted to help other people build their platform. I do benefit from my platform a lot, but again, I have one already. So what was the second part of your question, Tim? Actually, you know, just like you, I am horrendously ADHD and I don't remember what the second half of my question was. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, where do we stand on there and what do you, well, how about this? What do you think we still can do? Like what are some like the low-hanging fruits you think that we can do in the industry when it comes to, especially like during, you know, virtual talks and whatever to get more representation in conferences and talks and other methods of engagement? The lowest-hanging fruit is to, if you have any size platform at all and somebody asks you to speak at their conference, if the lineup is not diverse, you refuse to participate. So like that's just bare minimum, right? So, and I think that conferences, conference organizers, while they have the best of intentions sometimes, don't always execute in that way, right? Like they're trying to optimize for it. Like they want people to come to their conference. They want people to buy tickets. They want the lineup to be something that they know is gonna be good, right? And you have to, sometimes you have to gamble, right? So I know that this person, I've never seen them speak before, but the topic is interesting. They know what they're talking about. You can see in the abstract, give them the platform. Just give it to them. So I think it's hard. I imagine it's hard as a conference organizer to make those decisions, but we have to force them to by not allowing them our time if the lineup is not diverse. Yeah. I think one of the things that I reeled about in the, in the before times was that, we have these conferences and not only are the panels not very diverse, but we have these conferences in the most expensive real estate in the world, at times where it's, especially during the school year, whatever, you have them during the week, you have them in very expensive places, you cost thousands of dollars, the hotels cost thousands of dollars, and the plane tickets cost thousands of dollars. And you make it as exclusive as possible for people to be able to come, right? If you are a college student and you don't have a lot of money, it's gonna be hard for you to come. If you are a single parent, right, and you have to find someone to take care of your kids while you're there, it's gonna be hard for you to come. If you just don't have a lot of money and you're a junior or you're trying to break in, and these conferences are really, really good networking opportunities or opportunities to learn or opportunities to advance your career, you can't come if you don't have that money to invest. And so just by default, you're going to have people who are well-to-do or long-in-the-tooth industry that's going to not be a very diverse group. And I get that for community conferences, maybe where no one's making a profit on it and sure it's hard to get the resources to do that. But if you're at like re-invent or if you're like at Cisco or Microsoft, one of these conferences where these companies that are worth in the trillions of dollars or print money, you can probably afford to either have free conferences or have some grants or scholarships or sliding a scale kind of stuff or make it donation-based or whatever, right? Charge your vendors because they're the ones making money off it, but certainly folks who are trying to come and just capitalize on opportunity for their careers, maybe we don't charge them. And I've seen more people do that during virtual conferences because the overhead is a lot lower, but going forward as we go back into whatever the normal looks like after this, do we go back to that model where it's really expensive or really exclusionary or do we try to do better? And I don't know, I'm not a conference organizer either. It's easy for me to sit back here in my chair behind this keyboard and say, well, you should do this, you should do this, you should do this, I don't know. So if you're a conference organizer and I'm wrong and you want to tell me to get bent, please, please, no, like seriously, no, no, no Tino shade, please at me on Twitter, right? Because I would love to have that conversation and figure out what we can do. I will pick on Matt Stratton for DevOps days because everyone I like to pick on Matt Stratton because he's just a big soft, you know, I love him to death. But also, you know, he's really, really open to being held accountable for things. And I've come at him and was like, you also do this and you also do this and you also do this. This is very low effort for you to do to try and make things more exclusionary, not exclusionary, try and make things less exclusionary and more inclusive. And he's like, yeah, you know, we can try and do that, which I think is important. So aside from all that, right? I know that we're now going into fall, right? And as I understand, you are the most basic of white women. Have you had your first pumpkin spice latte yet? Tim, I don't know how many times I need to tell you this, did you not drink the PSL? Would you know I'm gonna ask you that every year? Every year, every year, I know. And not just once, but multiple times. So multiple times, yeah, yeah. You do, I have seen you wear the Hansel outfit though. Oh yeah, yeah, no, 100% there's pictures, for sure. Yeah, uh-oh. Okay, thank you. I'm like, this is live. So that's the four-year-old. And it's like having your own grandkid. No, really, like I'm shooting something live. Can you not? That's a 13-year-old. There's no excuse for that. I don't know why he literally just walked in here with a bag of charcoal. Like I need charcoal in my office. You might, you might. Welcome to live streaming, ladies and gentlemen, and other folks that are not ladies or gentlemen. So Ashley, let me ask you this. All right, so we're both on the bird site. And we're both somewhat active, right? If you could, as is completely out of the cup, if you could wave a wand and do one thing to make Twitter a better place, what would you do? And you can't close the site down. Question 10, there's so much. I don't know if I'm having a hard time narrowing it down. I think some are not safe for work. So I think somebody should, I think there should be a review committee for any anonymous photos sent to women. I think, I don't know if we could go back and forth on an edit button, I've been sold either way. I don't know, Tim, what would you do? I would moderate all replies from an account that is less than 45 days old. That's good, maybe not letting you tweet until you have at least a picture and some sort of content available. Here's the other thing I would do. This is actually, and I wish they would send me to do this for fun too, but I would make it, I would make verification super, super simple, unlike they do now, where as long as you have, like, you know how you verify yourself for a key base? Yeah. Like if you could use that process to verify yourself on Twitter so that the vast majority of legitimate Twitter users can be verified, right? It has to map back to a person, like a verified person, and then filter replies, responses, comments, reviews, or anything like that, to only verified accounts. Yeah, that's the only good feature about verified is that I can filter for verified accounts, and that is nice, but the pool is so small, there's not a lot. I am an eligible to be verified. Why? Because I don't have enough followers, or I'm not a news, like I'm not newsy enough, I'm not an organization, I'm not a professional athlete. Oh yeah, yeah, the new criteria, yeah. Yeah, yeah, and I didn't get in, I wasn't wide enough just to get in to be like verified with, you know, an account, a two month old account with 30 followers. That happens to see that. Oh yeah, yeah, and there's something about the people that happened to that I can't quite figure out about it, but it is what it is, but yeah, that's the change I would make, honestly, that's probably, I think that would make a big, the biggest change. Yeah, you know, make verification easy so that it maps back to a person, profile picture and all that kind of stuff like that, and then allow yourself to only be viewed by, comments and replies from, and DMs only from verified accounts. Yeah, that would be nice. I do like the new feature where you can, you can select who can reply to your posts. And now you can do it retroactively, which is great. Yeah, that's nice too. Yeah, but yeah, I think, because there's a lot of bad things about the website, right? But I do think, and I will say for me at least, especially during the pandemic, the ability to reach out to people and talk to people all across the globe, whenever, that are within a circle, right? Has been literally a lifesaver, you know, in a lot of cases where it's just like, hey, you know, someone's gonna respond back. I've met like real friends, like, you know, people that are really, really awesome on there. And it's just that it also, like there's that, that's great. And then it also sucks at the same time, but. Yeah, I think when I stopped having hard opinions on Twitter, the experience was much better, for better, for worse. Yeah, and I don't know that I don't want, I don't want to give up hard opinions. You shouldn't have to give up hard opinions. You should have. But it does make it easier, right? If you just have soft opinions and thirst traps make you super, super popular. Well, it's interesting. So, you know, my nanny just joined. And right now it's amazing and it's helpful and everyone wants to show off what they know, right? Like, oh, I'm gonna teach you something. I'm gonna help you. But then, you know, my good friend, Sarah Drasner, her mentions are a dumpster fire. And it's because she knows what she's doing. She knows what she's talking about. And she's an expert. She tweets about tech. And everyone just wants to argue with her and tell her she's wrong, right? So it's interesting how the dynamic between the two accounts. And I've already warned Nancy about this. Like, hey, as you become more confident and you start tweeting the things that you know, the same people who are there to rescue you and teach you will be the same people to well actually you later. Yeah, it's the competition to be the smartest person in the room. It goes back to what you said before. Like, you know, the best people I've ever worked with don't have those egos they do not think. Like, yeah, I have to be the smartest number one, the most, you know, alpha geek in the teams that I have enjoyed working on the most. Where everyone, you know, hey, I know about this. And I can talk to this, but I don't know about this. But this person does know about this. And you go to that kind of like very, very, it is. It's team-centric. It's like, you know, I specialize in this. Like, you know, playing team Fortress back in the day. Somebody has really good heavy weapons. It's great, but they're not a good sniper. Can't sniper, you know. Can you snipe with them with the Gatling gun? Maybe, but you should. It's not a great idea. Yeah. Yeah. That is the first time I've ever busted a gaming reference in like forever because I'm not a gamer anymore, but I still get it. Everyone's got a role to play. I have a role to play. I'm not a gamer anymore. It's like more than four buttons on a controller. And I'm out, I'm out now. Yeah, I gave it up when I think after I had crossed like the $30,000 threshold on how much I had invested in a computer for gaming. I was like, this is dumb. And I bought a console and I stopped gaming. Well, like every now and then I play a couple of games, but I don't have the time. I certainly don't have the money. And I just don't have the patience anymore to be into it like I used to be into it where I'm like, you know, clan practice and clan matches and, you know, all that kind of stuff and getting the fastest video cards. Yeah, nobody's back to toe for now. More power to you if you do. Like I'm not going to name them names, but I know people that still do that. And I'm like, hey, man, that's awesome. I can't do that anymore. I'm, you know, I'm just old. I'm not as rich as I should be. So all right, we've got a little bit of time left. I need you to tell me, Ashley, how's Lindsay doing? This is great. And he's working at a startup. He's still buying silly cars. I was going to ask, so I saw the fact that he got rid of the Supra and he got a minivan. Yeah, that's right. The minivan is dope. I don't want to hear any nonsense about the minivan. Choices, choices were made. The minivan is dope. Did he get anything else since the minivan? I said a BMW coming. A BMW what? I don't know. He even tweeted him and asked him, I don't know anything about cars. I know it's a BMW. I know a friend is going to pick it up from Denver and drive it here. That's all I know. I know that I won't be embarrassed to sit in it, is what he said. What I mean, look, if you're gonna not be embarrassed to sit in a minivan, you literally can't be embarrassed to sit in anything else, right? I mean, it's debatable. You haven't been in a minivan. It's amazing. I've been in minivans. No, you've not been in my minivan. You've not been in the Kia Fonar Bolton. It's incredible. Go ahead. I see it. Go ahead. Go ahead. I am unbothered. Yeah, just for the fullest pleasure, Ashley has two children that are young enough to be under her care. I have four children under my care and I just swore off minivans forever. I don't make choices. Yeah, everyone makes their own choices. They're good for her. I just can't do it. I was more, I wasn't sad for Ashley. I was sad for Lindsay, because I know Lindsay's a car guy. Like I am super in the car so I'll get it. Yeah, like I remember two weeks after we got it, they're like leaving a target and he took, he didn't take the corner as well as he should have and like curbed it. And he was like, yeah, I can't even like pretend to care about it. He's just banging it against stuff. You know, leaving the windows open when it goes through the car wash or whatever. It does not, it does not care. Not folding the wheel. Yeah, so yeah, he did get rid of Supra. For the record, I did not tell him to get rid of Supra. But, you know, he's like, he's some big dude and he likes tiny cars and he had back surgery. So, it's just, it's just not. Yeah, like I can't talk but so much because I got rid of my, you know, Infinity Red Sport 400 for a Dodge Durango GT. Like, so I had choices too, but at least it wasn't me, but. He's coming back, he'll get the BMW. I don't know when that's on point. I know it's not new, but it's not old enough to gross me out. It hasn't been through in the frat boys' hands yet. So, Ashley, what's next for you? Well, Tim, leading a bunch of language communities that are Microsoft. But any big projects coming up? Anything that you want to? There is not a single thing I'd like to plug at this point. Okay. I'm working on three hours of sleep and at this stage, I'm just trying to make it day by day, you know what I mean? Yeah, until, until a little more of those sleeps all the way through the night. Yeah, she's one in a couple of days, so any day would be great. Has it been that long? Yeah, she's one. Gosh, we're getting ancient. Be more so than you, obviously, but still. Obviously, yeah. Yeah. Well, Ashley, it has been wonderful to catch up with you on camera at least. And I am super stoked that you could come on here. Thank you for telling your story. Where can people find you? Okay. And like I said, I'll post up that, I will post up the link to your GitHub repository. GitHub repo? Yeah, yeah, learn the code repo. Please help update that and keep it up to date if you want to. It is GitHub. It's good to have PRs, it would be great. Yeah. And I will continue to advocate and support you, my friend, because you are doing awesome things and I cannot wait to see what you do next. So I am Tim Banks, and this has been Solid State. Thank you all. Bye.