 Hey everybody, this is Christian Buckley doing another MVP Buzz Chat. I'm talking today with Davide. Hello. Hello, hello. How are you doing? I'm doing well and thank you for this late call for you on Friday evening. But for folks that don't know you, who are you, where are you, and what do you do? Well, I'm Davide Bellona. I'm a backend developer based in Italy. I started working with .NET around 10 years ago. It was 2014, if I'm not wrong. Also, I'm a Microsoft MVP for developer pattern, which is because of my blog and the talks around the word, etc. That's always a popular question because you're a relatively, when did you get your MVP? It was last year. If I renew my word, this one should be the second one. Second one. With this, you're always a relatively new, what was your path to becoming an MVP? Because people, I'm sure you're getting questions. New MVPs generally do look like, what did you do? What would you do differently? Yeah. Actually, it was mostly because of my blog and because of Twitter, because I used to share a lot of tips about C-Sharp and programming, etc. And I put the developers even just directly in the direct messages. So, somehow, my blog stood out the crowd and they decided to work my effort. Let's say it's a very clean blog. We were talking about the organization of our office spaces. I have a very cluttered blog. Yours is a very clean interface. Yeah. I found that the Gatsby team, no, right. Now it's with Hugo, that Hugo team on GitHub, so I decided to customize it, tweak some parts, and they're pretty happy with it. A good friend that's trying to convince me to move my site over to Gatsby. It's a nice platform. I just didn't find a good team for me. So it was just a matter of layouts and stuff like that. Otherwise, I used it for several years and it was great, actually. Yeah. Well, I know. I don't want to go down a side comment there, but as far as the performance of the site, I mean, it's fantastic for that way, but as far as add-ons and extensions and other things, it's limited. So there's always a balance in those things. Well, so what are your topics these days? What are you writing about, talking about? Well, my blog is called Code for It. Of course, it is just a sort of pun for Italy, IT, and stuff like that. And it's mainly focused on .NET, C Sharp, and stuff like that, mostly Azure. And currently, I'm publishing four articles a month, every Tuesday. So every other Tuesday, I publish one in-depth article about something like .NET or some technology or stuff like that. Then the other weeks are one for a quick C Sharp tip. So stuff like that you can read maybe in just one or two minutes. And another one is for software architecture because I found the topic terribly interesting. So I decided to learn more stuff and more in-depth than maybe some other articles that you can find online because I want to understand how things work actually in-depth. So it's just, yeah, I delve into a specific topic and try to extrapolate everything I need to know and encourage. Basically, yeah, it's just because I'm curious of stuff. Yeah, well, I think that's a way that a lot of MVPs are. It's like we go in, we want to break down a topic, want to understand kind of all the various components. Do you get a lot of interaction with the community, with people asking questions that you would stand in your topic? It depends on the platform and on the articles. So mostly on LinkedIn, I get most of the interactions and on Reddit. Sometimes there are harsh comments, but never mind. Harsh comments on Reddit? What? Well, no, no, I couldn't expect it. I know, I'm shocked, but yeah. Yeah, surprise Pikachu. And no, I found it pretty interesting because it's actually those comments that drive my curiosity and also the content of my blog because when you publish something and receive some comments or some notes on your content, this triggers my curiosity and makes me search for more in the detail parts of topics and stuff like that. So it's just a circle. I create somebody replies and comments, et cetera. I found new ideas and create some more content. So it's just a circular economy for, yeah. Well, that's why I often say that it's one of the worst things you can do to a speaker is if I'm presenting, if there are no hands raised, if there are no questions, there's no comments. I'm like, am I hit? Am I am I miss? I mean, I have no idea, but I do the same thing. Like I have sessions, I have topics that I've, like the title has not changed, but because of questions that I've had, conversations afterwards during sessions, I've modified the content. And so each time I give the presentation, it's different. It's slightly different based on that feedback. I'd like to think it's better each time. Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. When I deliver sessions and there are no questions from the crowd, I usually ask questions to the crowd. So it becomes more than a session conversation and I try to understand their points or maybe just learn from their experience by asking them questions. So I found it a good way to interact with the audience. Yep, that's a great tip as well. So I see that you're also, you are speaking, what is it, what is it, six or seven events this year? Oh yeah, yeah, something like that. Most of them were remote events. So some meetups, one in South Africa and the other one, it was in the UK. But I'm pretty happy that this one this year, I managed to deliver an in-person talk in Vienna. It was my very first international talk again in person. So it was a fantastic experience. I hope that next year will be even better. It's a great city to go to as well, so I love Vienna. Yes, indeed. In fact, I decided to take some days of vacations and visit the city. So it was a great experience both as a tourist and as a speaker. So do you feel like, is it necessary for your, well, you're still relatively new as an MVP. Do you, is public speaking like something that you're, you feel like you have to do? Are you, do you like it? Do you enjoy it? Are you planning to do more of that kind of stuff? I don't think it's necessary, but I actually just love it because in fact, as I say, I love the interaction with the audience and learning from others. And, you know, it's just a fantastic feeling to be sometimes in the center of the attention on all the others. So just, you know, sometimes even the ego wants just some a little attention. So even that I cannot, I'm not, of course, a superstar. But when I, when I see that are at least, I don't know, five people or something like that is just a great stuff for me. So it's just the love of the stage and the sharing of knowledge. So it's both of the words. Yeah. No, I think it very much, again, that's a common, you know, pattern with MVPs is that, you know, love sharing, love to have the interaction. Again, one of the most difficult things for me as a speaker when there's not the interaction where I do the same thing, I'll ask questions, but where you get like heads nodding, but nobody's really engaging. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It makes it difficult, but there's something to be said about presenting to five, 10 people and having deeply engaging versus to an audience of a thousand people where you're just presenting outward. I prefer the smaller group. I prefer to have the interaction. I know selfishly, it's like, because I get more out of it. Not just, you know, here's what I'm sharing, but I'd rather have the conversation. Yeah, exactly. It's the same for me. It's the exact same thing for me. Well, so, and maybe you've not been asked this, but any advice for people that are interested in learning more about becoming an MVP, like what would you, how do you respond to that? Like, hey, what did you do? What can I do to become an MVP? How do you respond to that? I have to say just share your knowledge or at least serve the community. So I'm not sure it's necessary to share knowledge or something like that, but maybe you can organize events or, I don't know, facilitate some parts, some events or share other content or I don't know, organize a newsletter or something like that. So yeah, this is a good starting point, but of course, if you love sharing content or maybe you want to try, it's a good way to start your path to the MVP award. So I don't think it's necessary, but of course it helps a lot. Yeah, yeah, it's, well, I always tell people it's like, because there are some people that are just, you know, deathly afraid of speaking in public and there are MVPs that have achieved that status through forums, like never public speaking, they didn't write a book, but they are regular contributors. And I tell people just to find what you love doing and then just be consistent with that. Yes, yes indeed. Even just replying on Stack Overflow and I don't know, working on some repository on GitHub, or for sure it helps, so it's a good way if you don't like being on the center of the tension. So if you don't like, if you're shy and want to, I don't know, create YouTube videos or public speaking or stuff like that, of course, helping the community from the other platforms for sure, it's a good way. Yeah, it's a great way to Stack Overflow out of Microsoft tech community to also start rubbing elbows with the Microsoft, the product and engineering teams as well and the marketing teams that are out there. It always helps to have, you know, Microsoft contacts since you have to have an MVP or a Microsoft person refer you into the program. So kind of to conclude, to wrap up, I also like to get a sense of like your community activities. So you've done these virtual events, the one in person, are you involved in your local user group? Sometimes, because you're entering, there is a local group, but if I can, at least one time of every year, I try to participate as a speaker, but of course, the community is pretty small compared to some other communities. But yeah, if I can, I try to help, maybe not just, not only the one entering, but also the other ones in Italy. So I don't know, I recently participated in a session for uji.net, which is another community in Northern Italy. It was cool because it was in Microsoft offices so it was a great experience. But yeah, of course, it's having, even those smaller communities for sure helps. And it's also, let's say, a gym for your better, for your greater audiences. So you start smaller, you maybe you can present a topic for the first time and see how it goes and maybe just fine tune some parts of the presentation for your future talks. Well, that's always, if you are participating and you know the five, 10 people that are showing up to the monthly user group, it's much easier to present to them and get that feedback before taking it and proposing it to, because it's relatively easy to get into speak, especially at a virtual event where if you've got a great abstract and a great topic, the problem is then when it gets selected, if you're nervous about that. But it's, that's why another thing I always recommend to people, like reach out to the MVPs in your community and say, hey, look, I've got a session, I've got some abstracts, would you take a look? Would you give me your opinion on this? Or I recorded a video of this and tell me your thoughts on that because I love getting those kinds of requests because as an organizer, I mean, we're always looking for new speakers. We'd love to support new people into the community. So it's, just don't be shy, I guess, it's the hardest part is that first step. Yes, for sure. In fact, I'm not really a shy question person and the very first experience was quite traumatic, I know because I tried it to be fun and deliver some jokes, et cetera, but it was too, too, yeah, and I couldn't deliver. And it was a single joke, it was a terrible experience. So yeah, don't overdo it for your very first sessions then when you become more confident, of course, for sure it helps just to create some kind of boundary with the audience. Yeah, no, that's great. I think we've all had similar experiences. Some of my worst standup of my comedy was where I tried too hard and yeah. But well, listen, I really appreciate your time and getting to meet you and for folks that want to reach out and connect with you, where are you most active in social? Where can people find you? Well, for sure on LinkedIn and Twitter, they're both the account Bellone and Avida. So it's quite easy, it's my last name and first time. And also on my personal blog, codeforit.dev, for sure, I usually ever play to all the comments in every of those platforms, yeah. Excellent, well, of course I'll have all the links out on my blog, it'll be out on YouTube and on the podcast as well. So Davide really appreciate your time today. Yeah, it was a pleasure, it was nice to meet you. Wow.