 All right, I'm gonna go ahead and get started. Thank you for coming. This is from disabled veteran to full stack Drupal developer. My name is Edmund Dunn and I am now a full stack Drupal developer. I retired from the US Army in 2013 and after some searching about, found that being a web developer and specifically in Drupal was my path forward. I work for an design group. We are an agency that works with mission-driven organizations, often in partnership. We provide strategy, design and development, working with organizations that are mission-driven doing work that matters. So the start of my journey, I started enlisted in the United States Army in 1992 between my junior and senior year of high school and I shipped out for basic training in the lovely paradise of Fort Jackson, South Carolina in June of 1993. And let me tell you, basic training in South Carolina in the summer is a hot mess, literally. Yeah, I don't think I've ever sweat so much in my life, but anyway, I enlisted to be a linguist and an intelligence analyst and following basic training, I was sent to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, which was completely different from Fort Jackson. And after 18 months there, I graduated as a Russian linguist and then was assigned to a unit in Germany where I spent three years. During that time, I deployed to Bosnia. We started our deployment in December of 1995 when NATO troops first entered Bosnia. It was a good thing that we were there, seeing the results of the conflicts and the devastation was not easy. It's still not easy thinking back about it, but I am glad that we went. One of the reasons that I did join the Army was I wanted to help people and we had the opportunity in Bosnia. I deployed to Bosnia one more time in 1999. And then in 2004, I deployed with the US Navy into the Western Pacific, supporting operations there. And those were my deployments. I was fortunate never to get deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq because they didn't need Russian linguists, surprise, surprise. I will say that the soft skills that I learned in the Army, things like written communication, things like how to accept criticism constructively instead of taking it personally. And the skills and analysis that I was trained in in critical thinking are all skills that I use every day in my job. It's a huge step up to have those skills. And most veterans, if not all veterans, have received the same or similar training because communication skills are important and they train us in how to communicate. Although sometimes communication can be a little more blunt than people are used to, but it is what it is. I retired out of Fort Meade, Maryland in 2013. And after 20 years, I never thought I'd do 20 years, but I did. And I look back on that time with no regret. I learned a lot. I learned a lot about myself. I learned a lot about the world. I got to see a lot of the world. And I got to work with international partners from all over the world, which gave me a unique perspective into different cultures, different peoples, different places, and how they work, how they think, the food they eat, things that we might not think are unusual to other people are unusual, and vice versa, things they don't think are unusual, we do find unusual. My transition out was not easy. It's not easy for any service member. There's always a struggle to define what it is we're gonna do, what we wanna do after our service. You go from a life where everything is controlled, you don't even have to worry about what clothes you're gonna wear, because I tell you what to wear, what uniform you're gonna wear for PT, what uniform you're gonna wear to go to the motor pool to do weekly maintenance on the trucks. They tell you all of that. And out in the civilian world, it doesn't work that way. The transition is supposed to be made somewhat easier by something all the services run at all the bases, and it's called the Transition Assistance Program. It is, the one I went through at Fort Meade, Maryland was, it was okay. They tried to cover too much information, and most of it was not information we needed. And that was noise in the transition. And after talking to veterans from other services, the transition out at other bases, that noise exists at all of them, and everybody found it equally as unhelpful as I did. One of the things they don't really cover is the VA or Veterans Affairs. The VA has a lot of programs that are there to help veterans figure things out after the service, whether it's things with healthcare, with disabilities, or with programs like Vocational Rehabilitation, which is a program that I went through to become a web developer. There are also veteran services organizations, the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans, or as many others. They also provide help. In most of those organizations, it depends on who you're working with, on how helpful they are. But a lot of them do provide assistance. The reason I went through the Vocational Rehabilitation program is I injured my back pretty badly while I was in the Army. And I have three surgeries on it, soon to have a fourth, and I cannot sit or stand for long periods of time without a great deal of pain. And that's why you see me sitting in this chair. This is one of the few chairs I can sit in comfortably for any length of time. I work at home, and I have a picture later in the slides, in a zero gravity recliner, and I have a monitor on a very long arm that swings out in front of me, and a keyboard on a swivel desk that swivels out in front of me and lets me more easily work. And I can sit in that chair and work for eight hours without a lot of pain, which is good. I did a couple months after I got out as a government contractor. I didn't enjoy it, I didn't like it. I think mostly because I was missing that sense of belonging that I had in the Army. And I did quit, we had some savings, and my wife told me, let's just take a step back, figure out what you wanna do, what are you gonna enjoy? And I had called my bank about something, I can't even remember what it was, but the representative on the other end, it was a veteran, and he'd gone through vocation rehabilitation, and he's like, hey, have you heard of voc rehab? I'm like, no, what's that? And so he told me a little bit about it, and so I applied and was accepted. And they provided everything I needed. They helped me figure out what I was gonna do, and they provided computers, books, they paid tuition for me to go to school. At the time, coding boot camps weren't an option, so I went to the local community college through the web development program, which took a little bit longer than a boot camp was, but the result was just as good. I also got a living stipend while I was in that helped with expenses. And that program is underutilized by most veterans because they just don't know it exists. And then they transitioned to assistance program, and they didn't talk about it. Nobody mentioned it. And most veterans getting out have some sort of disability that they're dealing with, whether it's a physical disability like me, or a mental disability like PTSD. And this vocational rehabilitation can be used by, you have to have a disability, but it doesn't matter what kind of disability you have, they'll help you get set up. They do more than just educate you. They, if somebody's restricted to home and they can't leave home, they'll help them set up a home business. And so it's a great program. One of the reasons I like speaking about this, and I've chosen to speak about this, is also to reach out to employers about how they can help. Right now, there are probably somewhere between one and two million open positions in tech industry in the United States. Everybody is chronically short, and it's not getting any better. And there is a population of individuals that just don't know what it is we do, or how to get into it, where to get started, what all the different types of jobs, positions, et cetera, that are available, and what those jobs entail. And so something employers can do is they can reach out to, if there's a local military base, they can reach out to the transition assistance program. And they can also, through the VA, they can reach out to their regional vocational rehabilitation office. The VA has broken the country down into regions. Their regional offices, every regional office, has a vocational rehabilitation office, and the social workers that work in those offices are overworked and underappreciated. There's not enough of them, or they can't keep the positions filled. But any prospective employer coming to them saying, hey, we wanna help is of huge assistance because it takes a little bit off their plate. Now they know who to call. They don't have to figure out who to call. Hiring fairs are helpful. Hiring our heroes is a big organization. The, I believe it's operated by, or under the auspices of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And they do both in-person hiring fairs and virtual hiring fairs all over the country. And they have, you go to their website, and they have a page for employers where you can register with them, and then through that you can become eligible to attend those hiring fairs. And those hiring fairs are also a chance for service members getting ready to get out to ask about what it is you do, and what these jobs and positions entail. The last thing is just be willing. I'm gonna speak some more about accommodations, but be willing to accommodate veterans with disabilities, whether it's a physical disability where they need special hardware, special furniture, doesn't matter, or a mental disability like PTSD. Those things can be accommodated. And just be willing to work with them and figure out what can be done to accommodate them. I've been fortunate at Atten Design Group. While I work, they are very accommodating to my needs, and I basically have to ask for something, and I can get it. And I just have to explain sometimes why, how is this gonna make things different. But if you're willing to help and listen and give those accommodations, whether it's a special chair or just letting a developer who has PTSD from his time in the service just work off in his corner, it will all make a difference. Things that I found especially helpful, I was lucky because the community college was very well resourced. They had a very diverse staff of adjunct professors who were all working in tech. For the most part, most of my classes were development-based classes, so they were developers. And I connected with them and took the time to get to know them a little bit, and I found those that I felt that connection with and they became mentors to me in a lot of ways. A couple became long-term mentors that I would reach out to many times. And just that networking with them made a big difference because it helped me understand all of the different types of development you can do, whether it's front end, back end, full stack, whether you wanna get into DevOps, I didn't know what those things were. And these professors and mentors helped me understand that. I also joined AIGA because I knew that being part of a professional organization gives you access to additional resources. And it also gave me access to people, more people that were working in the industry that I could ask questions of. And I could go to classes that they had. I did a couple of portfolio reviews through AIGA, and all of that helped me get to where I am and helped them get me ready. The mentors that I had on both development, I also took some design classes and I had a mentor there that made things a lot easier because I always had somebody I could turn to and ask a question. And to have somebody that is willing to answer those questions. And whether it was a career type question, like what does a front end developer do? Or a question on, okay, I'm working on this JavaScript application for this class and I'm stuck, can you help? Having people willing to answer those questions and to work with me and made a huge difference to me. And I don't think I would be where I am today without having had the mentors that I had. Internships, I think the biggest frustration that most junior developers have is finding a job. So you'll see job listings. We're hiring a junior developer. Do you need two years of experience? Okay, that doesn't help. In my mind, that's not a junior developer. So how do you get that experience? Well, one way is through internships. And one of my adjunct professors in my class worked for a small e-learning web development agency in Maryland where I was living named DaVinci Interactive. And I asked, I said, hey, does DaVinci do internships? Well, it turns out they do. And it turns out that the now owner of the company got started with the company as an intern. And so he kept it going. And they always had one or two interns at any given time. And they were paid internships, which was huge, huge. And I went from a summer internship, which I got college credit for to a non-credit internship until I finished school. And then once I finished, I got a full-time position. You know, that's how I got my start and that's how I got that experience. I also interned with a freelancer who I connected with through a group called PTSD Chat. They do most of their work through Twitter, just helping people out with PTSD. And she volunteered and resourced a website to help share resources on. And so I helped run that website and develop features for that website. And just gaining that experience at the same time, knowing that I was helping other veterans was very fulfilling in a lot of ways. I did, going through the community college, get two associates degrees at the same time. I had to take, I had two programs that kind of ran in parallel. One was web development, one was web design. I ended up getting a degree in each because I had to take four extra classes. And my case worker was like, go for it. It makes you more marketable. I will say now that I am at best a mediocre designer but the things that I learned taking those classes in that program make me a much better developer because I understand what I'm looking at. And I can see things too as I develop a site that might stand out to me and say, oh, maybe this shouldn't be here. It should be over there. Or maybe this picture should be smaller or bigger. Or maybe we can break this content up a little bit. Things like that help. And like I said, it was four extra classes. And spread out over two years, the length of the program wasn't length. I didn't have to stay on an extra amount of time to finish those classes. We were able to work them all in. And I walked away with two degrees. And so I now have three associates degrees and a bachelor's degree. Degrees don't necessarily matter. In my case, my last two associates degrees were just a way to get the training I needed to get me started. But be open to that. Look for it. See if a school has that possibility because it is definitely something worth looking into because it makes you more marketable and easier to find a job. I also did a lot of work marketing myself. I took, in one of my design classes, this was a print design class. My final project was my resume. So I made up a really nice graphical resume with some graphical elements in it. And I designed, there are essentially business cards. I called them contact cards because I wasn't in business to hand out at conferences and meetings before I got, before I had a job. And they were circular. I don't have any anymore. I wish I did, but people saw those, especially when I'd go for interviews and it helped me stand out a little bit because it didn't fit in the stack of business cards. People don't think about stuff like that, but it makes a difference. The last thing was accommodations. And I didn't know, like first semester, I didn't know that I could even ask at the college for accommodations. And I ran into another veteran and said, hey, you should go talk to the accommodations office. I'm like, what's that? Well, it turns out every college and university by ADA has to have an accommodations office. And they have counselors that work in those offices that help students with special needs, whether it's physical disabilities, mental disabilities, those with some kind of learning issue. Maybe somebody that needs extra time to take tests. In my case, my accommodations were that I could leave class early if I needed to without having to worry about anything. I had, if I needed to stand up and walk around or step out of the classroom because of my pain, I could do that. I also got electronic versions of all of my textbooks. And those of you that have been to college know that textbooks can weigh quite a bit. And not having to carry around 50 pounds of textbooks to all my classes, again, made a huge difference. And so I was able to load them all as PDFs onto my iPad and inside all my textbooks on my iPad. And none of that stuff I would have known I could even ask for. If that veteran hadn't said, hey, go talk to them. And then they were able to ask me the right questions. So get, because I didn't even know what to volunteer. I didn't know what to say. They were able to ask the questions and figure out, hey, would this be helpful? Would electronic textbooks be helpful? Well, yes, they would, thank you. And so the other side of accommodations is accommodations that work. Legally, an employer cannot ask you about your disability through the interview process and you should not volunteer that information. For me, I'm kind of in a special category as a disabled veteran because for all government positions as a disabled veteran, I get bonus points towards getting hired into one of those positions. And a lot of companies will also provide, kind of give you a leg up if you're a disabled veteran. But that's as far as I go. I don't talk any specifics until the offer letter has come in. But once it does come in and I start talking about accommodations and that's when we talk about special chairs, desks, monitors, the setups that I need to allow me to work. And I have not had, well, the two employers I've had so far in this field, neither has pushed back on any of the accommodations I've requested. There's been some discussion on like the best way to accomplish what I need. Because sometimes I don't know how to accomplish it. I've spent some time with those occupational therapists figuring some of this stuff out. And once I figured out exactly what I needed and I could say I need to order this monitor arm, my company was like, okay, tell me the details and two weeks later I had to monitor them. But again, those of us with disabilities have to advocate for ourselves. We have to speak up and say, hey, I need this accommodation. And good companies will work with you on that. Here's my contact info. Feel free to write it down, share it out, spread the word. I have started a Drupal Veterans Group on groups.drupal.org. I'm hoping to use that to get veterans working in Drupal involved and getting other companies involved to kind of help spread the word about what it is we do in tech and how can we help? And we have some postcards with that information, that group information. So I think Janice has some of those, and it's got the information about the group. And it's a good place to ask questions. And no question is stupid. So ask and I will answer to the best of my ability. I also reach out, I have made myself available through LinkedIn to mentor veterans. I've had so far three come to me and say, hey, I'm getting out or I just got out and I don't know what to do. But I saw your information and what does a web developer do? And just getting into that conversation, explaining it, answering their questions, giving ideas of where they can get to education if they want education or maybe some of them I just want to go to a boot camp. It doesn't matter. I can help them find that information and also explain to them what it is a developer does. And last but not least, if you come by our booth where you can use the QR code, register to win an iPad or a set of AirPods. And now please ask any questions. Yes. When I started off in voc rehab, I actually started going to graduate school to become a social worker. And after a semester, I realized that I could not sit in an office because of my back. And so I went back to my case worker and said, this isn't going to work. And I explained why and she said, okay. And so I did a couple of those aptitude tests, the same kind of like high school guidance counselors. And one thing that came up was writing code. I can't remember exactly what they called it, but it was, they didn't call the developer, right? I think it was programmer, which is kind of outdated. When I was in high school, I had taken some computer science classes and enjoyed them. I got away from that in the army. So I saw that pop up and I was like, oh, this has possibilities. And they provided me computer printer, external hard drives, a Adobe subscription to Creative Cloud. Any book or resource that one of my professors would recommend they would pay for. So if my professor said, hey, this book would be a good book to have and read and keep as a resource, they bought it for me. So they provide everything that you need. People don't know about it. Yeah. I think there's also a stigma attached to being disabled in the army. And I think this is true in all the services. There is an attitude of you suck it up and drive on, something hurts. You take a couple 800 milligram motor and then you just keep going. And while you're wearing the uniform, if you're out on an operation, you gotta do what you gotta do. You got a job to do. But a sergeant major that was a good friend of mine told me that the military is a machine and everybody in the service is a cog in that machine and cogs break. And so that's why they keep it going. Fresh people in, broken people out. And things have improved a lot in the last 20 years when it comes to veterans and resources for veterans. And now the challenge is getting word out. But things like LinkedIn are making a huge difference. And I know I'm connected with several other veterans on LinkedIn, one of whom is a veteran's voice. He's got an official position with LinkedIn and he goes around advocating for veterans and how to help them find careers, new careers. Some veterans will be coming out of career fields that easily translate right across and they really enjoy what they're doing. So I think like maybe IT would be a good example of that. They like working all the networking and hardware and all that. So that's a very easy transition for them to do. I could have transitioned into working for NSA. I didn't want to. I worked there while I was in the Army and I didn't want to work there as a civilian. But there aren't a lot of positions for intelligence analysts outside the intelligence community. And so that's where I ended up. Spreading the word through speaking engagements, through online engagement helps. I'm gonna do it. Any other questions? Yes. Does this know about anything? Is there some ways that to reach veterans that are maybe not seeing all the open doors? Do you think that's a loaded question? Yeah, no, it's a good question though because there is a way. I mean, they have to be willing though. That's the thing. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make a drink. And so in my case, I couldn't do a physical job because of my disability. And even though I would have loved to, I wanted to own my own race shop, building Mini Coopers for racing. I took some classes and stuff and headed in that direction and then I hurt my back and so that was out. And so I had to be open to a new career field. And so I think for older veterans, it's a little harder just because they're of a certain generation but is not necessarily anti-tech but they don't really understand it and how it can be used. And I think in that case, it's a discussion with them to kind of show them. And it doesn't mean sitting down on a computer and saying, this is what it is. It's talking to them and saying, hey, this is something you can do. This is something you can learn. I mean, a lot of these boot camps run for 12 weeks. And even if you're not eligible for something like vocation rehabilitation, there are boot camps that you don't pay until you get a job. And I know there's been some controversy surrounding that and that means that this demonstration you need to do your research. But I'm willing to talk to any veteran about what I do. And I think veterans talking to other veterans is gonna help because we speak the lingo. We speak the language. And one thing I will say too, is since Drupal is kind of an international community, this problem exists everywhere, every country. And it's something that can be solved in much the same way by just talking to the veterans and saying, hey, here's what it is you can do. And also talking to potential employers and saying, hey, this is what veterans can bring to the table. Any other questions? All right, well, thank you very much.