Jonathan Baltz on Developer Education and Learning | ChicagoWebConf 2012
Hi, I'm Mike. I'm here at Chicago Web Confident, and now I actually have the shirt so I can represent. Hi, I'm Mike. I'm here at Chicago Web Confident, and now I actually have the shirt so I can represent. Discover the unique dynamics of the Force. com and Heroku user groups in Chicago! Learn about the differences between the two groups and the impact they have on the developer community. Don't miss this opportunity to connect with other developers and learn from the pros!
The Interviewer
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
The Guest
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Hi, I'm Mike. I'm here at Chicago Web Confident, and now I actually have the shirt so I can represent. I'm sitting here with Jonathan Baltz. Jonathan runs the Force. com and the Heroku user groups here in Chicago, and that's kind of an interesting combination of groups, Salesforce and Heroku. One's very lean and light, and the other one is a little more enterprise-y. Why the two groups?
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
Well, I started organizing the Force. com developer user group in Chicago around, I believe it was April or May of 2010. Over the time, it became one of the largest or the most impactful user groups in the nation. I believe it was the middle of 2011. Salesforce actually purchased Heroku, and I was actually asked to start one of the first Heroku user groups here in Chicago because Salesforce knows how big the community, technology community is in Chicago, and they wanted to start building up a community and community user groups around America, and they wanted us to be one of the first. Okay, and so when you say the most impactful, what do you do at a Force.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
com meeting?
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
Like with the enterprise groups, I'm not too familiar with those.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Do you present on product or how to use the product?
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
Well, I guess I might have used the word impact. Involved, I guess. Okay, by involved, meaning we're continuously having meetings every month, and we continuously post things on Twitter and on the internet. There are a lot of Salesforce user groups around, but there aren't that many developer user groups who go in-depth into the Force. com platform rather than the administrators and how to use it and how to do the administration stuff. And we also have a lot of developer vandalists come talk or do Google Hangouts with us. So it's continuously involved, and so through the involvement, we sort of make an impact and people look at us as a pattern. Okay, and so other user groups in other cities are looking at what you're doing and saying, "Oh, how can we replicate some of what they're doing in Chicago? " That's a really interesting position to be in. The two different groups, I have to imagine you get a different audience between Heroku and Salesforce. Yes.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Do you get the same people in both, or is it totally different?
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
Well, sometimes you get a few people who do go to both meetings, and these are the people who, you know, it's Force. com, it's Heroku, which is a polyglot platform, meaning you can use different languages on it. And they're not interested in sort of only learning what they want to learn. They want to learn everything. They want to learn technology. They want to learn how, you know, maybe the way that certain people use some, you know, Java on Heroku, maybe that can, you know, I can use that idea, that concept in my Force. com development. And so those are the people who go to both, but, you know, between the two of them, with the Force. com user group, you find some administrators who want to learn more about development, to hardcore, invested, other statesmen, if you may, Salesforce developers who, you know, want to either present or hear other people present on the platform. Whereas Heroku, you get a wide variety. It supports Python, Java, Ruby, Node, Scala. And then that's just the official build packs. Yes, exactly. And so you get a wide variety of people who just, you know, depending on the topic that's going to be presented, they will either come or not come.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Okay.
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
And with the, so would you say that the Force.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
com group is a little bit more pragmatic? What can I do to make my life a little bit better?
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
Whereas maybe the Heroku group seems to be a little bit more, hey, let's, this is neat.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
Yes. Yes. A hundred percent.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Okay.
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
And, you know, I have to say, I've had to touch some Salesforce and I didn't have nice things to say about it. It was, and that's not an indictment of this.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Do you get people coming to the group?
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
And some of that is probably just not knowing the platform well enough. But do you get some people that come to the meeting and have maybe a chip on their shoulder about Salesforce? Because sometimes I have mixed feelings about enterprise software. They're trying to do something good, trying to create something. But sometimes people get frustrated and we might take our frustrations out on a corporate vendor a little bit harsher than we would an open source vendor. So they get a little bit more of the venom.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
Do you get, ever get, uh... Sometimes. I mean, you don't get that many. I mean, a lot of times people don't go to the user group if they don't want to know about the topic. A lot of the people that do come are using it or are interested in using it or have, like you mentioned, have used it but want to know more about it. Those people that do have that venomous feeling, they just need to, I mean, a lot of times when that happens, someone will talk to them and then show them the right way to do it. Or suggest that you go to the discussion boards on developerforce. com and ask questions about it because it's a wide variety on the discussion board, or a wide variety of people on the discussion boards who are willing to help everyone. And that will actually probably give them the answer. And then, you know, the whole idea is like, don't get frustrated, just ask someone and then, you know, you might, it might make it better.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
And also, I mean, along the lines of receiving the venom, the sympathy for the developers, I know some Salesforce developers, and those poor, poor souls with, because they have to take on all the responsibility. Because a lot of other people who aren't, as either as well, either lack of interest or, or just, just don't know it as well, tend to try to push as much responsibility on them as possible. Is there, is there some, uh, sense of relief maybe coming into a force. com group is like, ah, we're, we're the blood brothers. We've, we've done battle together is, is, is there, uh, maybe a little bit more, um, identification with, uh, with, uh, force.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
com developers?
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
There is in, I mean, there is somewhat, uh, but it, that's not what we're looking for. I mean, it's not really a closed neck group of like, okay, now, you know, of like, I don't know, I don't know, but soldiers or policemen or firemen or people who have, you've been in, you know, you've been in things together. You're, you, you, you, like, you're, you have this camaraderie, this, this, you know, sympathy or empathy. Um, it's actually just like, I want to learn more. I want to see how things are, you know, who are. That's a positive answer.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
And then, you know, we mentioned that, uh, regarding, you know, that people just push, um, tasks or issues onto the Salesforce developers. And the reason is because not many people do have this knowledge and, and that's really part of the reason that I took over the user, or I started the user group in Chicago and my, one of my main focuses is like this platform is completely wide open.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
If you want to learn it, you don't have to pay a cent.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
At all. Um, you get a free developer, um, environment. All the documentation is free. And if you have questions, come to a user group. We'll help you.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
We'll provide, you know, the information or help or, or, or direction. And it's hard to get that message out. And it's hard to find people who are interested or want to know more. Um, most of the people are recruiters who just want to hire someone. And it's like, you need to grow people before you actually put them up towards the world.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Okay. Is there any plans for a force oriented, um, conference or anything in Chicago?
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
Um, upcoming, uh, right now the plan is, uh, in the works for a, um, a sort of a developer, a small developer, you know, evening conference, uh, in the 24th of October.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Okay.
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
Um, no locations set yet, but it's coming up. Um, one of my main ideas for the, for the 2013 is to either have a force. com, um, cloud, uh, you know, web camp day, like, like, like this conference here today, or say cloud computing web conference where you bring in Azure, you bring in AWS, you bring in force. com, Roku.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
And developers that work on that platform together for a day, just talk and compare notes and compare platforms and, and get that together and sort of build up the, the user group and the community within Chicago.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Okay.
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
And, you know, before we wrap up here, you're going to be doing a lightning talk on user community.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
You had some, you had some thoughts about that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Uh, what was, what was the topic of the, uh, lightning talk?
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
It's, uh, it's called community, not dictatorship.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Okay.
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
It's community, not dictatorship.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah. Okay. So what does that mean?
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
Um, a lot of people go to user groups, a lot of people enjoy going to user groups and they look at the people who host them or organize them or set the meetings up on either Eventbrite or Meetup. And they look at them for, okay, tell me where to go. Tell me what to do.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Um, who am I going to see?
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
And it's like the, they're organizers. They're not leaders.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
It's a community. The organizers are there to organize and to say, Hey group, this is where we're going. I've talked to this person. I've gotten this location.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
I, on this day, we're going to go there. Uh, it's not saying, Hey, I did, I found this place. I found this speaker. It's going to be on this day. You know, they're not dictators. You know, if you want to hear a topic, if you have a good idea of a speaker that you want, I want to hear. If you have a place that to host, let us know. Let the organizers know.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
It's, it's not, it's a very subtle difference between I got us a meeting place on this day versus we're going to be meeting at that place on this day. Yes. Correct. There's, there's a subtle, but big difference. It's that I went through the effort to get this, you know, I hope it's nice and that you enjoy, you know, versus if you don't like it, just, you know. You don't have to come.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
And the other thing is that like, if you are interested in it, that sounds like a great meeting to you.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
Put it on Twitter, put it on your blog, put it on your website because as of right now, I mean, we, you know, the way that meetup works, you can only email members of the group. And if people don't know about the group or not signed up, they're not going to know about the meetings. And it's that networking, it's that marketing, that message to be sent out that it, you know, in order for these user groups to be, to thrive and to grow and to build, we need that work. We need that, you know, extra step for each, from each member to push the message out. And every link back helps. Yes. Correct. And it's not just Twitter. If you can blog about it, if you can even put it on the Facebook or even set up a Facebook fan page for your user group. That's Facebook. I'm kidding.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
What is this Facebook?
Jonathan Baltz
developer education and learning
▶ Speaking
No, I'm kidding. But no, you set up the fan page because every place you can help disseminate the information. Yeah, correct.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you very much for taking your time. Thank you. Whoop.