 Okay, thank you Bumi for the introduction. So actually this is going to be very informal It's a fireside chat for a reason and I believe the reason why you guys are here because you want to know more about How tech communities in Singapore doing the leaders experiences and I think that's what we're here to learn from right even for me I I already know Michael very well For me meeting Max for the first time. He thinks I'm lonely for the first time. So that's interesting for me Right, so but really just today. We're just gonna be asking them a lot of questions and just time Just to really spend and then hopefully you all get something out of this. Okay, so I think let's start right? I know I already Bumi did the introduction But I think we want to know more about who we are talking to here, right? And then they are especially on the community side right like the experiences and And what they do so maybe maybe we'll go one wrong with with Max first Okay, yeah, so it's actually okay. So my name is Max. So I'm a founder for up skill cycle It's actually to help people with disabilities as well as able individuals to break the attack Been mostly doing a lot of community work in the Python is a group site Last year I was voted as president not vice president, but yeah, but mostly been doing a lot of By by cons you also have heard of a few apex that we have in Singapore It's actually one of the things I've done in the organizing community side since I was in uni about I think six or seven years ago Yeah, so and now mostly helping out with Michael in the junior deaf SG as well as deaf as she a telegram group that we have to Cheat on tech and yeah, that's about it from my end Hello everyone, I am Saloni and I work at wise previously known as transfer wise and I'm a software developer. So on the daily we do the usual software development staff production support improving the features on the product itself And on the side, I am also leading the women who court Singapore division where we are hosting many events for talks events workshops for The women community to excel in tech So yeah, we can check us out on meet up. That's where we host our events Hi, my name is Michael Professionally, I'm a software engineer and I lead a team in gov tech working on the work pass systems at Minstram and power So I lead a team of about 14 and software engineers and we were basically maintaining the website for microintomacic workers For so on the side I'm a community builder. So basically I've been doing community building since 2000 I've forgotten when So first the communities I've started in the past things like PHP user group iOS Dev Scout More recently the junior dev Singapore, which is like a support group for Freshman software engineers. So if you're like Fresh graduate or make your ass richer coming into tech I would I would suggest you join our group and find out more and Also started the engineers to SG So as a way of like documenting and recording all the tech events as happening in Singapore. Yeah, so that's that's me so I think Okay, so I think you guys know a little bit more about them So I think I will just throw the first question to Michael because he doesn't even remember when he started community building But I do and it was 2006. All right. So that's a very long time So I think my first question to him is, you know How do you even get started because that time was even a time when I think none of us I think common communities wasn't a big thing, especially tech come come communities back then. Yeah, so I just wanted to like figure out, you know So When I first started in 2006, I think there was only like a Java user group and Perhaps in Singapore because the tech community at the time was cut small Not many software engineers or people or rather the government wasn't really pushing for software engineering as a thing so there weren't many Singaporean or Singapore based software engineers like myself and So I felt like hey, you know Tech communities need to Folks in it. I was looking for like-minded people. So I was like, okay, I say I'm doing PHP I should probably try and find a community that's doing this even though there was already a Java user group and there's a Ruby brigade, which is like Back then yes, now they call Ruby SG. So yeah, so back then we want so I was like, okay There's there's the community for Java as community for Ruby I should I should that should be community for PHP, right? There's a lot of people use PHP. So I looked around they were actually actually to Defunk PHP user groups. So the time was okay. So since no one's doing this actively now, maybe I should try So this bought this desire to find like-minded folks. So it was born out of two things someone previously as a evangelical Christian I Enjoyed the idea of a cell group. So a cell group as a place where you can kind of like meet Faith folks in the same religion and faithful and we kind of like share and strengthen each other So I felt there was a good thing that they had in the religious community So I don't want to try and do something as well in like that in the tech community And the other part that pushed me towards this was open source The open source movement in even understand about open source the more you share the more you share to the world the greater it is for the whole I mean is the more you get back, right? So the idea of sharing an idea and the idea of sharing as your experiences and building the community up as a whole just by Giving free stuff, right? I think there's this that's a very important part of it. So these two Past experiences just came together where I felt we should really try to do this and find like-minded folks So that's how I started the PHP user group As a way of like creating that community But unfortunately the first meetup I had was like three four people at Blue Works having beer So it was like kind of a humble beginning But things got started really picking up when I did when PHP or other when Facebook started pushing out the PHP They have this Facebook plus Facebook Facebook use PHP, right? So they did like a They have this API which they just opened up the Facebook API for building games and stuff So there are a lot of people who are very interested in how this API works and the law group will probably using PHP So there's this E27 there's a group in Singapore which started a Facebook developer garage It's that kind of an unofficial thing to kind of like get the community together building You know apps in Facebook on Facebook API. So I was there and I gave out my name card Hey, this is like PHP user group check us out We just I just created the Facebook group last last last night and And the number of people just got started ballooning and number of members in the community side ballooning Okay, let's try and create an event like you know meet up So, you know how many you can can have can turn out right? So I didn't have a venue I didn't have speakers but just created an event on Facebook and suddenly got 40 50 people sign up for it Oh, okay. Now I have a good problem. I So and I started asking around. Hey, does anyone have like Topics to share so I was like, okay, I'll it says I'm the leader of the group I should probably share something and then but I still need so I found one my two of my friends who could I talk a bit about? Security in PHP. I talk about I will talk about PHP one-on-one like how you how do you get selling PHP and I Was like, where do we find venues at the time? There wasn't that like a lot of the companies who had space for this so but schools had a lot of space So I spoke to some of my friends at Ruby Brigade and hey, you guys are holding meet-ups at SMU Right, so could I kind of like can't touch or someone SMU they could do this for us and they introduced me to the Object-oriented programming society at SMU. I'm not sure how many of you actually heard of that before But yeah, they had a distinct group there and I was like, oh, yeah, PHP is open OOP right? Yeah, it is You can write no OP Okay, so yeah, they decided to host us and we and yeah, that was how we got really got started all those years ago So yeah, what's keeping me going is are those two things finding like minor individuals being together Sharing our sharing like my individuals coming together sharing our ideas and building up the community Like that open in the spirit of spirit of open source. Yeah Thanks, Michael Sorry, thanks Michael that that was a yeah that story. I've not known before Yeah, and I don't think anyone here or so probably knows that so I think um, it's Yeah, I can't believe there was a Ruby Brigade back then because I think that probably is a Ruby 1.0 But the good thing that I think that I picked up from all of that right was that At Brookes three or four people with beer now that's that is important Right, I think it's also the spirit for for for any groups in Singapore or it's not just about the content But it's also about the networking the community that you get out of it and you know from just what I heard from him, right? It was really just a lot of the Just finding like-minded people gathering together and I'm also a Christian So I understand where he's coming from and I believe like people from really just babes also do have the same kind of Similar concepts. La right. So maybe uh, yeah Maybe let's hear it from Saloni, right? You know woman who could right nothing now you're the director, right? So just wondering what was the passion how do you get started and stuff like that? So I actually got involved in Tech ladies and girls in tech way before women who code So once I graduated from university and my first job already I started feeling a Bit out of place because I used to be the only Female in every team that I would join and yes So that was one of the motivating factor for me to join The existing tech ladies and girls in tech Committees that were already around That's why I realized there are actually quite of quite a lot of female programmers around it's It's just that we need a little bit more push and support from each other so I actually started out with coaching at for girls in tech for like Even from secondary school itself. We used to teach. I forgot the name of the software Which we used to teach while loops if if switch statements and stuff then we progress to teaching React.js and and stuff at tech ladies There's like bootcamps So I would learn at work And then I would just you know teach at all of these events because I believe teaching is the best way to learn and Through all these events I would meet a lot of other females just like Michael said like-minded people and to know that there are role models out there and There are people out there Also in the same situation as me is a very important thing for women in tech so just last year in 2021 actually Opted in to be the director for women who code women who code's mission is to empower women to excel in tech careers and Women who code is actually a global organization. We exist in 57 other countries So I just lead together with my co-director the Singapore division so We have we hold events to allow women not just women everyone to excel in their professional careers so we have intro to cloud computing for AWS and events like a lot of interviewing rounds prep Going on and not just in software development other streams like data science UI UX so yeah, we are Hosting all of these events finding speakers all the time And even volunteers to help out run these events so Yeah, that's that's how I got involved and how I am still remaining in it because Yeah, so it is really nice to see all of these women excel like from non Software development careers to having a software development career and really liking that the field itself Yeah sorry So I think I think that's a really interesting so maybe maybe you could tell the difference just a bit more between a Tech ladies and women who code because I hear that woman code is a global organization and of course there's a lot of paths Enablement from from what I'm hearing also. So it's just the distinction between them, right? Yeah, I do not really see a lot of difference it is still a Forum for women to come together in tech fields But maybe one thing that I do notice is Women who code are the events that we host are more for women who are already in tech To allow them to excel in their careers Tech ladies also has events and sessions for those To encourage more women to get into tech. So that's one main difference that we see But overall the vision is still the same Okay, you know in I think just one thing you mentioned about volunteers, right? How's the volunteering with the group house the vibe house the spirit? Is there a lot of People charging along with you, you know, are they what are they really driven by? Yes, we do have so in the past two years. We were very online We actually did not even meet up but pre-covid We used to have in-person events that used to be a lot more Real like you will actually see the passion from all of these young ladies Who are like talking about the experiences to others who are Yeah, basically The I feel like them the whole thing comes from the same point where each of us see Ourselves in companies and organizations as the only woman in in the team So that's where everyone's passion comes from There even a lot of men in our volunteer group who also would like to see more women in the in their teams so, yeah That's Okay, thank you. So now we have only asked two of them. Let's go to Max Before he goes to go, right? so Max you are You said you're the president right president of the python user group Tell us more about that, you know, what's what's going on? What's going on in the title the python user group space and you mentioned a lot about pycon I know there was a lot of past pycons in the past. I'm not too sure if they asked you now So it would be good to understand more Sure, so essentially, right? I have been mostly been doing a lot of pycons as well as So for this year onwards, right? We are actually looking at how to we Be self-sufficient because all along in a lot of user groups in Singapore most of it is actually Voluntary basis, but we saw that actually in it in event that we want to actually run by corn We may not have the funds because we need to source the funds for to run even something like this It's cost a lot as well. So we also wanted to actually to try to consolidate from our end as well to see who are the actual members in the first week and it's just just a Brief search is about six thousand or more as well for for us a python, but we didn't do a lot of Requirement or actually checking. Okay. How many? Members are actually in the society because for us is actually we are operating as a society So as a society we have four thing rights as well as our own Funds that we actually need to activate from our end as well to actually promote python in general to all in other areas like beta science and more towards the education or even helping out to Do mentoring because we saw that actually has been areas that we can actually consider as well because of there's a lot of people that's a general awareness of using python for For for data science cloud and various other things But there's not a lot of opportunities that we can see in terms of jobs How can we do referral jobs networking as well as mentorship for me myself when I came in? I didn't have a mentor but say la most of it is actually from YouTube and books that I From the community leaders that actually are in python for my end is actually Django. So, yeah So mostly what we are looking at is actually how can we help in cultivating this membership to draw on you let's us to send it relevant and quite quality informations or as as well as job opportunities for people like myself who wants to get a job using python because python can be used for a lot of things but It's very hard if so you need to have more referrals for the user group. That's what we're looking at You were on topic of I think jobs alright, so I'm just opening up to the crowd because I guess I used to know someone who's now in the US Who said that all his job changes right have been through the Community itself that means he has been involved in the community every single job change is not because he applied for some somewhere else It's because he actually you know, he knew someone someone knew he was good and then things naturally happen So I'm just wondering the same way if you know like any of you is that something that has happened in your life? Maybe with Michael. Yes, I'm pretty sure it has right, but yeah Just opening up and just seeing if someone would want to answer on this question I Mean not personally Itself I I do apply for jobs But I do know someone really close She's a very good friend of mine. She actually started from a non Technical background She joined one of our tech ladies boot camp where I was her coach We built for three months. We built an NGO website full stack So that's where she learned actual coding and from there. She applied for like Local banks and she's now currently working at a very reputable firm So and now she's giving back to the community where she started from so she's now an assistant coach at the same Tech ladies boot camp. She's giving talks for our women who court events on No JS express JS and and stuff so That's one success story. That's really close to me and it came out from the community So she's involved in the different even engineers SG and junior deaf SG So yeah, like it's all born from the community and it comes full circle back to the community Yeah, so for my end right actually I was given some Offered a few jobs opportunities as a developer advocate and a few tech come in one tech companies La very famous one But yeah, so I was actually referred that because of my ability in terms of community development work as well But overall so far what I have is actually I believe is actually Connecting with people who actually are different in terms of your position because when I came in, right? Well first thing is like wow so many people that is I was I just graduated from uni or just junior developer came in I'm actually standing on shoulders of Giants meaning a lot of people who are actually very experienced from Example people from Carousel like the very high level one as well as somehow what also CTOs in startups as well so the reason why I joined is actually I literally like Standing on them la because I I get to absorb their information on absorb what their perspective as well on what we should do for certain technology decisions or thinking of how could we help the people or in terms of developing developers to break the attack because that's not a lot of During it, I think for my cope case and many others case it might be a mid-career change for you and You need to have a support ecosystem to be there to actually help you to Become a developer as a junior developer or probably succeed to become a senior as well So just keeping to your own technology group may not be good But actually networking across pollination actually helps as well because you never know next year maybe someone when you're speaking in a tech event a conference or a Workshop you might be hired because of what you're doing or what you're showing and people like you I heard of few success cases like One person who actually went to SPG digital. I think as well Yes with Michael. Yeah true. Just actually talking about oh hardware because it's a hardware engineer as well. Yeah Okay, thank you I think you spoke about mentoring you spoke about like speaking on giants and stuff like that And I think the one thing that has been on my mind, right? It's looking at I think like one one one of your set before Like, you know when it started out There was no one to mentor and I also felt the same I felt when I went in industry I was like not to share what what I'm supposed to do here, right? But the one thing that I'm seeing right now that I think is very interesting is junior depths, right? So I mean I've been looking at the programs like oh wow actually this is this is really creating something This is this is a secret sauce you've been been missing for quite a while in Singapore So so just wondering you know, like the aim over there the kind of stuff you are doing, right? So We I started junior deaf again as once again as a support group for Freshman software engineers. I Felt what I saw at the time was there were a lot of coding schools There were a lot of people doing mid-career switching They were like people who just got laid off of their accounting job or law late lawyers Who just decided to just switch into tech. So we deal with it. I did see a large number of Young and maybe even mid-career folks were like, oh, I'm new to this I'm I just joined a coding bootcamp in Singapore or and We've a lot will come to meetups like JavaScript meetup Ruby meetup and they were like, oh, yeah yeah, there's everything is new to them and And That's how I felt. Hey, this is big This is such a big group coming up. Who's helping to support this group and bring them to the next level because says there's always a chasm There's a chasm between junior and senior which is the intermediate as in you move You and we see a lot of folks who are junior developers if they're not mentored properly They just drop out or they just get disillusioned with the whole tech industry and because we see a lot of And we also see we see engineers in a lot of junior engineers We see a lot of quite a number of senior engineers But not enough like mid-level engineers who could like support and help even to graduate and develop into senior engineers And that's what's important for ecosystem to continue to have that Ability to help junior engineers cross that chasm right from junior to senior. How do we get that? How do they get there? Right, so that's why I started the junior deaf as a way of like bringing together all these people and Giving them the resources and giving helping giving them an opportunity to network We would like my individuals of the same level or even future even potential future colleagues so they can find people who are I Like I like what you're doing. Can I get an interview at your company or something like that? I mean the opportunities for the network and meet people is quite invaluable and When you see all this we also wanted to give them opportunity to shine So we created like a meet-up group and we'd like people to talk about their learning journeys What they have learned what the things they started working on things are hacking on I Got the idea for junior deaf not from Singapore. Actually, this is from Australia There was a there's a as a meet-up group there called junior there for IO. I think we started out in Melbourne So I saw that on my friend on my good friend's page I'm like hey, dude, could you just introduce me to the founders? Let me try and bring this to Singapore and They graciously allow us to do that. They actually expanded to quite a few other places like junior deaf IO has and they are in Sydney They are probably in New Zealand KL there's also one in KL and I don't know what he's whether the guy is here. So yeah, so we did we did So there was only a guideline on how what what you should have like events and we also they were also quite big on on diversity So they wanted to they told us that the one of the conditions of having his franchise is that our speaking Our speakers have to be like at least 50% diversity as in it has to be So for all these years we've been doing this. Oh, I was every time we have a meet-up They always be at least 50% women or person of color So it's like it's important for us to let help give them representation and Give an opportunity to shine and I also see myself as a leader helping to it's important for me to also help them like like some of the speakers our less I'll just encourage them and Because I'll always have local for speakers, right? So I always be look at you seem to have interesting thing you're working on or even are some of my colleagues I'll just tell encourage them. Hey, I think you should give a talk on deaf ops because you were deaf ops engineer Hey, you actually should give a talk about quality engineering and how they do be doing that in workplace Both are women and then they will be speaking there one has spoken really and the next one is coming up Probably much on top that we also find we did a survey with our junior developers Hey, what what what activities would you like us to organize because I talks is one thing What else can we do and one of the things that you wanted us to do was a mentoring program which we started This is currently in our fourth batch. Well, it's pilot plus batch one batch to battery. So it's a zero index So yeah, it's our when the best tree and then we just started we just started this year And we'll we start the first mentoring session will be in February 1st Yeah, so it's like a in a in a group mentoring set up that you learn soft skills and learn from the seniors Like why you could how you should how you should act and behave and you will work in Technology groups like this In an attack career for example, and we also do like a coding coding workshops We do in fact right now in AWS. We have a coding workshop We call it developers gym like, you know, how now you code with Jim developers code and Jim and But they do coding so they do coding workshop today as a coding workshop and they'll be doing some refactoring learning about how how to do refactoring with the gilded gilded rose cut up So it's like a second second in the series. They were doing on refactoring. So yeah We give opportunity to network through our meetups to learn new skills from our developers gym and to even Build up their soft skills and abilities in in a mentoring kind of capacity. So that's what we're doing Okay, we're almost Running out of time, but I just have one last question So I think I have this question from some folks who, you know, if they feel very passionate about the community And obviously they get inspired, you know through programs. They also get on board. Sometimes they want to volunteer There are also some that they will know they want to volunteer But they there's also some in terms of maybe resistance or maybe some timidness or stuff like that Right, how how in your line of experience was like any one of you like me maybe Saloni, how have you dealt with this kind of cases? How have you encouraged them in that sense? Yeah, that there's definitely that hesitancy because it could be a big group already and you know How do we enter such big groups? I Would say you should Try to DM one of us Maybe one of the organizing team or another volunteer in the team and they can slowly phase you in like it will start with like one hosting an event not really speaking first But they are hosting an event and that's how you get the feel of how how it's done and then slowly you can gain some confidence and then become a speaker or an assistant coach or a Menti a mentor that there are so many different kinds of events and stuff happening. So yeah, but do Do not hesitate. Do just ping one of us if you can Yeah, so for me, right? Ideally just come in for a meet-up We have a lot of meet-ups and usually we need speakers and you can just come in and speak or Can talk to us. We will just ask you to actually come for a meet-up and talk to talk to the people in meet-up They are all good friends or all are good people. So you don't need to worry about anything So and yeah, just chitchat and slowly if you want to actually involve yourself help on organizing Conferences like Steve has been doing as well as a few others. Yeah, I Was saying that you shouldn't point to me should be pointing to Michael. He's the prime example Okay. Anyway folks, that's all we have for today. We just want to make sure we're running on time but really thank you for our three Other fellow leaders who have actually made the time to come down here and to really share their experiences, you know, just I've gained a lot of insights. I'm I hope you guys also have done the same and I think they will they will be around Right. So maybe not for Michael and me But we will be running around because of this conference, right? But definitely just feel free to You know just meet them after this. Yeah, and with that, yeah, thank you for just being here