Practice Empathy Built Trust Empower Others

1. Building a Better
Scala Community
Kelley Robinson
@kelleyrobinson
© 2019 TWILIO INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

2. 2013

3. 2013

4. 2015

5. 2016

6. 2016

7. 2016
ScalaBridge

8. 2016
ScalaBridge Scala Center

9. @kelleyrobinson
COMMUNITY = ALL OF US

10. @kelleyrobinson
COMMUNITY = WORKPLACE

11. @kelleyrobinson
COMMUNITY = CONFERENCES

12. @kelleyrobinson
COMMUNITY = ONLINE

13. How do we build a better
community?
© 2019 TWILIO INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
@kelleyrobinson

14. © 2019 TWILIO INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
1. PRACTICE EMPATHY
2. BUILD TRUST
3. EMPOWER OTHERS
@kelleyrobinson

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PRACTICE EMPATHY

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@kelleyrobinson
Q: If you had a machine that could
dispense an infinite amount of
anything what would it be?
A: Empathy
Mike Schur
Showrunner (Parks and Rec, The Good Place)
Reddit AMA, January 2018

17. Why are you building
what you're building?
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@kelleyrobinson

18. Why are things built
the way they are?
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@kelleyrobinson

19. © 2019 TWILIO INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
@kelleyrobinson
"lol why are you using scalatra, it's a
garbage web framework"
- me, once 😬
❌

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Just because you
can doesn't mean
you should

21. What does the customer need?
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@kelleyrobinson

22. Industry != Academia
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@kelleyrobinson

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Where are people
coming from?
•Language background
•Company size
•Industry type

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BUILD TRUST

25. You don't have to know everything
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@kelleyrobinson

26. Who do you
trust more?
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@kelleyrobinson
1. Asks no questions
2. Asks thoughtful
questions

27. Thoughtful questions
make you look smarter
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@kelleyrobinson

28. © 2019 TWILIO INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
@kelleyrobinson
I am trying to ____, so that I can ____.
I'm running into ____.
I've looked at ____ and tried ____.
KWu | Senior Software Engineer, Heroku
blog.newrelic.com/culture/better-junior-developer

29. © 2019 TWILIO INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
@kelleyrobinson
I am trying to edit our auto-generated
documentation, so that I can fix a broken
code sample. I'm running into failing tests.
I've looked at the equivalent SMS docs and
tried editing X+Y files.

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Reciprocity
builds trust
Experienced engineers should
model this behavior

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Avoid feigning
surprise
"You haven't heard of
Apache Spark?!?"
"Cool I get to tell you about
a data processing tool!"
❌
✅

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Vulnerability
builds trust
Everyone loves a good story
about failure

33. Admit when you don't know
something & help normalize a
growth mindset.
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@kelleyrobinson

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@kelleyrobinson

35. Looking for talk inspiration? Tell a
story about what went wrong and
what you learned from it.
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@kelleyrobinson

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@kelleyrobinson
Don't assume
"basic" knowledge
is universal
My best performing Twilio blog post

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EMPOWER OTHERS

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@kelleyrobinson
Follow the Pac-Man Rule

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@kelleyrobinson
Leave physical space for
a new person to join a conversation

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@kelleyrobinson
Expand and repeat!

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Inside the
workplace
• Hire and train folks
without Scala experience
• Reward engineers for
non-code behaviors

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Outside the
workplace
• Teach at ScalaBridge
• Answer Stack Overflow
questions
• Coach someone on their
meetup presentation

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@kelleyrobinson
ScalaBridge.org
@scalabridge
Slack! (DM for invite link)

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@kelleyrobinson
ScalaBridge.org
Yifan X. Heather M.Noel W.
👏👏👏

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@kelleyrobinson
dev.to codenewbie.org

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PRACTICE EMPATHY
BUILD TRUST
EMPOWER OTHERS

47. The community is yours.
© 2019 TWILIO INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
@kelleyrobinson

48. Be kind to each other.
We're all trying our best.
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@kelleyrobinson

49. THANK YOU
@kelleyrobinson