 Hi everyone, welcome. I'm Devaneck, junior Drupal developer at Canopy Studios. And yeah, hi fellow Kenopians on the first couple of rows and my manager Jim in the back. Today I'll be talking about how Discover Drupal changed my life and what I'll be talking about is a little bit about who I am in my background. I feel like as someone who's more introverted leaning, a lot of my co-workers still don't really know me as well as how I got started with Drupal thanks to the Discover Drupal program and Drupal's current talent pipeline issues and how I searched for a job as a junior Dev as well as for ideas how we can continue to close the gap and community initiatives for future diverse talent. So a little bit about me. My journey into Drupal, before I did Drupal I was a college student at the University of Minnesota. I was actually a business major so I had no business being in web development or Drupal and I was also a janitor at a gym part-time as well as a math tutor for elementary school kids. So quite a different life. And so the way I found myself to Discover Drupal was I was pretty close, still I'm close with one of my high school mentors. They had emailed me the Discover Drupal application and then we had a talk and I was always sort of kind of interested in web development. I had taken a few CS classes in my time at the University of Minnesota but I never really fully delved into it. And then the pandemic hit and I decided to take a break from college because I did not like zoom university. And so in that time, in that period of time for reflection and thought, this Discover Drupal program happened to line up perfectly for me. So I thought, why not just do it? It's something to do during the pandemic while I'm away from college. And why was Drupal appealing to me? I had actually heard of Drupal a little bit at the University of Minnesota. I would see that like a lot of the websites at school were built on Drupal but that's all I knew about it at the time. I had no idea it would be this very vast world and like vibrant community of people. And then so I will be going into my experience as a Discover Drupal student. So I applied in May, 2021, was accepted in June, 2021. And through the beginnings of Discover Drupal, I went through trainings for media currents, Drupal Easy and Evolving Web and as well as I got to do some contrib work on the project browser initiative in the spring time of last year, 2022. Wow, time really does fly. And a little bit about Discover Drupal. Discover Drupal is an initiative from the Drupal Association. It was launched in 2021. I was a part of the pilot program. Yay, being a guinea pig and getting subjected to all the new stuff. So my cohort was four students. We all graduated, three of us, now full-time jobs in Drupal and the 2023 cohort, six students will graduate this June. Actually there's, is there anyone in the audience that's currently a Discover Drupal student? Awesome. And then the current training partners are Drupal Easy Evolving Web and Drupalize.me. And here's a picture of myself and my fellow classmates from last year's cohort, Andries, he's very tall as well as my classmate, Joseph. And I will talk about, some more about my experience as well as DrupalCon last year. So I would say one of the biggest things Discover Drupal did for me was put me in contact with people and resources that really allowed me to succeed and dive into Drupal as Drupal is a very intimidating space to enter and it's a very steep learning curve. And last year in Portland, I got to meet the team at Canopy. Well, I got to meet Allison first just through being in Discover Drupal but I also got to meet the rest of the team as well. And I would say the most important takeaway as that was my first DrupalCon was just, I enjoyed the sessions but going to the buffs and going to the mentored contrib hours as well as those small groups where I found a lot of value in just because I got to really pick people's brains that have so much more experience in Drupal than I do as well as just network and especially being able to be more than just a Discover Drupal graduate to be myself, Devin and for other people to get to know that about me was so important. More about Discover Drupal and why it's such an important initiative for Drupal it helps bring new diverse talent into Drupal and uplift marginalized communities for people from underrepresented backgrounds that don't necessarily have access to Drupal. As well as provide training through the training partners I had mentioned before as well as mentorship. I had gotten to be mentored by Joe Shindlar. He works at Drupalize.me and he would just always be available to answer literally any question I had. I'd ask him, how do you implement a hook or what is a controller or stuff like that? Stuff that just is something that I feel like most senior or some senior devs kind of, that's already commonplace in their knowledge base but as someone brand new, it's always nice to just have someone that you really can't ask a dumb question. They're always open and available and some adversities and challenges I went through as trying to become a junior dev and break in to Drupal where I just noticed there's a lack of junior developer roles and I got super lucky that Canopy was actually hiring for a junior dev at the time and then I had really hit it off last year at DrupalCon with them. So that was a challenge because most of the roles in Drupal that I've seen today are mostly for senior dev roles and so it's not always the most friendly space to get into and preparing for tech interviews because there's one thing to prepare for like a general interview but I feel like tech interviews are a whole nother beast in itself. So just having to prepare not only for behavioral portion but also know your technical chops and believe that you are good enough to do this with something else. And like I mentioned before, the learning curve to Drupal is pretty steep for someone who has no prior experience to Drupal. To this day, every day, I'm learning something new at work so it's been a great experience as well. Also, here's how I prepared for finding my junior developer job. Discover Drupal did, well, they made it super easy for me for not having to really go search for a lot of materials. The curriculum and structure was already in place. I had to just go study or just go reach out to my mentor or the various people I've networked with. So they made it very accessible for me to succeed. And I also got a Drupalize.me subscription as well. They offer a lot of tutorials about Drupal whether that's theming, module development or site building, which I still use to this day to keep myself up to date and continuously learn. Also, Drupal.com was probably like the biggest reason I have a job today besides Allison shooting over the application to me after Drupal.com last year. So I got really lucky as well as it put in all the time and hard work in the finding my job. And how I've grown as a new developer, I feel Discover Drupal, the experience equipped me with the tools and the right mindset to just being able to continuously learn and not being so discouraged every time something doesn't work because as a developer and especially a new developer, there's so many unknowns and uncertainties and times where things just really don't work about like 90% of the time. But when it does work, it feels great. And also, yeah, my growth at Canopy this past year, I couldn't have asked to be in a better place to start my career in Drupal. Just being in co-working sessions with my coworkers, them always being a slack away or Zoom call way to answer any questions and just them being available or open-minded to anything I have to ask them about has been super fundamental in my growth. What agencies could do to help support junior developers? Like I had mentioned before, there's certainly a gap between, between entering the Drupal space and senior devs because I feel like most of the people I run into at DrupalCon are senior devs. I don't really find a lot of people in my current level like a junior dev or intern per se. So I think agencies could continue to sponsor initiatives such as Discover Drupal or Drupal Easy, the course I took through Mike and Nello, he offers a scholarship for people trying to enter the Drupal space. So that as long as well as maybe becoming a mentor to someone that's just trying to get into Drupal as well. I think these are all things like people, part of agencies are just people in Drupal could do to help support newcomers to Drupal and make it a more inclusive and friendly space to be in. Why should companies build a tech talent pipeline? So I think the main reasons that companies should build a tech talent pipeline internally once they reach that point in their company growth and stability are that a lot of the senior devs, there's one thing that they can't beat and that's time and like aging. Eventually they're all gonna get much older and then retire some day. So it'd be nice to not just have a future workforce. And looking around, not all my coworkers are much older than me. So I think by the time I get to their age, they should probably be retired so they can enjoy life. So I would wish that for them. As well as I believe that or I know for a fact it's more junior talent would help close a salary gap because junior talent would help free up technical bandwidth for senior devs to do the more complex and challenging tasks that they don't necessarily need to do all the time. As well as junior talent provides a fresh new perspective. A fresh new perspective on like just, because I feel like generally senior devs ask each other questions, but sometimes it's nice when they have to just like explain for example, asking about like how do plugins work or something more basic in like module developments. I think having just junior talent around keeps everyone keeps everything fresh in terms of their technical skills. And as well as not only just building, bringing in fresh talent, but a diverse group of talent because a diverse talent means diverse thoughts, opinions, and perspectives because we wanna build products and services that represents our community as a whole. And like I had mentioned before, alleviates concerns of an aging workforce, encourages a more diverse workforce. And here are some things I know for my discovered Drupal student in the back, these are pretty helpful or even just if someone is out there looking for a job, have an active GitHub, do contrib work and build a personal site in Drupal. And then there's always aqueous certifications such as the front end certification I'm studying for right now in my spare time. And some general resume tips that I used when I was applying were to keep my formatting simple and easy to read, avoid big blocks of text, keep your resume to one page. I know HR loves to see something that's very easy to read and something very concise and to the point that just shows who you are in a very quick manner. And you also wanna quantify your impact. For example, last year when I was working on Project Browser, like quantifying like the documentation and like the impact of what I did for contrib work was important. Also highlighting my technical skills. For example, learning module development, module development, theme development, site building as well as showcasing like the different languages I know such as PHP and JavaScript. And then also some general places where I search for jobs. I didn't really search for, I stopped after DrupalCon because I was feeling really hopeful that I get to try the canopy. I applied to five places and put like most of my effort into canopy just because I knew Allison personally and I got to know canopy super well. So I was really banking on just working on canopy. But these are some general places to look for. I recommend if you haven't joining Drupal on Slack and adding the jobs and looking for work channels as well. But I feel like the best advice I could give anyone is to come to a conference or a Drupal camp and then get your face out there in front of employers. Not necessarily like asking for a job but just getting to know them and asking them like what are you looking for in a future candidate if there's not a position open or like what kind of roles are you looking for? Then where the network can get involved with the Drupal community? Like I had mentioned joined Slack channels. Those are probably the easiest thing to do right away. So the Drupal one was I'm a part of the Drupal easy one. And then your local group, I'm native to Minneapolis. I'm a part of the Twin Cities Drupal group. And then attend Drupal camps and conferences such as the one you're at right now. And then a great way is like open source contrib work. So I think this is like probably one of the best ways to network and get involved. And this is not necessarily directly but just by doing contrib work you get to know other people who are also into the same thing as you. And if one thing leads another like, oh Devin does did great work on this contrib module. I think he would be, he should be considered for this role. Like it just kind of ends up happening serendipitously. And then these are the supporting organizations for the Discover Drupal program. And that is my talk, thank you. So Discover Drupal is the initiative from the Drupal Association. And Drupal easy is the training partner for Discover Drupal. So they're not, so they're different but they work together. But you could also just take a Drupal easy course without having to go through Discover Drupal. Eventually someday when my chops, my chops get better but yeah, I would love to give back. Through the course, what was a daily thing of what you would do? Was like, would you go do issues? Would you build modules? Would you build sites? What are some of the tasks they would have you do? Yeah, so in my Drupal easy course, a lot of it was just running down through the very basics of module development. So every day to cement these skills into my head, I would explain to myself, what is a hook? What is a route? Was a controller? Then walk through why? I then go through how and then actually go do it. So I can not, so I don't just like, feel like I'm copy pasting the code and more understanding how everything works at a fundamental level. So it's kind of how I attack like every day of learning or still do. Yeah, yeah, so I worked a night shift at the gym as a janitor as well as my math tutor job was pretty flexible but in regards to just make carving out time, I used Drupalize.me, which is kind of like a training catalog of videos. It's not really like bound to a set schedule like Drupal easy is. So I'd recommend taking doing trainings from Drupalize.me as well as there's a couple others like Debug Academy or Drupal Tutor that I also used to to learn. But if you could, if you can make it like work in your schedule, I think Drupal is easy. And obviously I'm biased because I took like two of their courses, but it was a fantastic way for me to learn. Also you get to have fellow classmates who are going through it live with you too. Yeah. I don't know a specific answer off the top of my head but I think the reason I myself as a fellow young person was very attracted to it was that was the opportunity provided just the like ability to go dive into web development as well as seeing the support and the courses that I was able to take through them but also kind of like on a more broad perspective seeing like what people with Drupal could do whether that's working in nonprofits or government stuff and just kind of seeing what Drupal is really capable of is why it was so attracted to me. Cause Drupal can be applied to any sector. We did the Discover Drupal program, what was it missing? Yeah. I think what Discover Drupal was missing when I was a student and I don't know if it's changed since then but I felt like I was missing like I loved doing the contrib work for Project Browser but I felt like I was missing like a capstone project like to really dive into whether I know some students that I was with were really into site building or front end. I was specifically really into backend development so I would have loved to just like really just build contrib module of my own that did something with like my mentor and the support of like Discover Drupal. So I kind of wish there was like a more specific project track layout to really dive into whatever the student was really passionate about. Yeah. So his cohort of the project like a piece of code to show when they were job hunting that has since been in this current cohort and they tomorrow actually, I believe you are presenting an actual finished piece of code project so that they can take that to agencies to show when they're job hunting. Does knowledge into the trip? I wouldn't, I would say it's kind of always been around to me since my dad works as a software engineer but like as far as personal experience because I didn't want to do anything my dad did when I grew up, I didn't want to touch anything code related. So I would say I had like zero experience. But yeah, it's just something that I picked up and then fell in love with and now I'm here today. So I didn't know that doing something similar to my dad was something that I wanted to do. Not yet, but I am working on it. Thank you. Thank you.